
Class _£lX-&££6 
Book . \^ G Gc 7 
GopyrigMN . 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 





t 9 


Jl 




r 




* ' - - 






The Great Gospel 



zAn Address to Theological Graduates, Lectures 
on the Gospels for the Church Year, and 
"That Remarkable Lodge Sermon." 



By REV. S. P. LONG, A.M. 

H 

Author of " Prepare to Meet Thy God," and "The wounded Word," and Pastor 
of the First English Lutheran Church, Mansfield, Ohio, 



MISS FLORENCE M. WELTY, REPORTER. 




Columbus, Ohio: 
Lutheran Book Concern, 

1904. 



UBRARYof CONGRESS 


Two Copies Received 


JAN 5 1905 


Copyrignt *:n:ry 
CUSS CX. XAc. Nu 

9 fc % 7 

| COPY B. ] 






Entered according to Act of Congress 
in the year 1904, 

BY REV.. S. P. LONG, A. M., 

In the office of the Librarian of Con- 
gress at Washington. 



PREFACE. 

CHEKE are many sermons on the Gospels in the 
many languages used by the Evangelical Lu- 
theran Church, but it is a question whether 
the public has ever read Lutheran sermons like these. 

1. Not one of these sermons was written by the author. 
In a church of fifteen hundred communicants, where three 
new sermons are required each week, not to mention the 
many extra funeral sermons and addresses, it is simply im- 
possible to write the sermons. The author will always 
thank God for His reducing these sermons to writing, by the 
skillful hand of Miss Florence M. Welty, and shall consider 
it providential that he was compelled to preach his first ser- 
mon at Capital University in the place of a sick theological 
student before the last half was written. He has since 
written many sermons, but he neved preached more than 
one-half of one written sermon. 

2. These sermons are all new. All were preached ver- 
batim, as contained in this book from Advent, 1903, to Ad- 
vent, 1904, with the exception of the lodge sermon. The 
subjects and the sermons are all new. No one who knows 
the author will doubt for one moment that they are original. 
It is one thing to read sermons written in the study and 
gathered in years of careful preparation, and quite another 
thing to read exactly what the congregation actually gets in 
the morning sermons of one year. Multiply this book by 
three, and you will have one year's food given to the First 
Lutheran Church of Mansfield, O. We wish we could do 
better. 

?, 



IV PREFACE. 

3. We make no apology for giving this book to the 
world. A large congregation crowded a large temple to 
listen to these sermons. What patience! One man would 
not listen to these sermons because, he said, the author was 
the first man lie ever listened to who said absolutely nothing. 
All this time the church was crowded at every service to 
hear "nothing." They say that man had his toes tramped 
by "nothing." The author has aimed to preach God's eter- 
nal truth at any cost and to leave his testimony in this world 
after his death on the Great Gospel and the burning ques- 
tions of the day. 

4. His OAvn trials by death and sickness in his family 
have moulded many of these sermons, and may comfort 
others in trouble. "Eejoice evermore." 

5. Hoping to see the day when there shall be one true 
Evangelical Lutheran Church in America in name and prac- 
tice, the author hereby dedicates this work to God, whose 
true Word it proclaims. 

Mansfield, O., December, 1904. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

Pi'Li'iT Power 1 

Advent Sunday : — A Remarkable Ride 18 

Second Sunday in Advent: — Christmas is Coming, and so is Christ . 32 

Third Sunday in Advent : — Our Christmas Catechism .... 46 

Fourth Sunday in Advent : — An Advent Autobiography .... 63 

Christmas : — Plain Philosophy for Poor people . 77 

Sunday after Christmas : — The Christian Church 92 

New Year's Day : — Four Jewels from Jesus 107 

Sunday after Xew Year's Day: — The Christ Child Crowned . . . 118 

Epiphany : — How Heathen Reach Heaven 130 

First Sunday after Epiphany: — The Lost Lord 140 

Second Sunday after Epiphany: — A Marriage and a Miracle . . 154 

Third Sunday after Epiphany: — Which Way 171 

Fourth Sunday after Epiphany : — The Terrible Tempest . . . 187 

Fifth Sunday after Epiphany: — The Heavenly Harvest .... 195 

Sinth Sunday after Epiphany: — The Transfiguration .... 208 

Septuagesima : — God's Gift of Grace 220 

Sexagesima: — The Royal Road to Ruin. (Confirmation Sermon) . 232 

Quinouagesima : — The Passion Proclamation 244 

First Sunday in Lent : — That Same old Serpent 257 

Second Sunday in Lent : — A Beautiful Battle 272 

Third Sunday in Lent: — Dumb Devils ......... 284 

Fourth Sunday in Lent : — Let Nothing Be Lost 297 

Fifth Sunday in Lent : — Did Jesus Sin ? 312 

Palm Sunday: — (Reunion of Catechumens.) The Scarlet Thread . 327 
Good Friday: — (Read the Author's Book: "The Wounded Word.") 

Easter : — Resurrection Rocks 341 

First Sunday after Easter : — Sunday 358 

Second Sunday after Easter: — The Heart of History 374 

Third Sunday after Easter : — A Little While and A Long While . 387 

Fourth Sunday after Easter: — The Truth Must Be Told . . . 399 

Fifth Sunday after Easter : — The King's Key 414 

Ascension : — The Celestial Counsellor 426 

Sixth Sunday after Easter: — The Comforter is Coming . . . 442 

Pentecost: — (Confirmation.) Hold Fast 454 

Trinity Sunday : — Who are Heathen ? 4(17 

First Sunday after Trinity : — Nine Reasons Why Rich and Poor 

Should be Saved 480 

Second Sunday after Trinity : — Divine Enthusiasm 493 

Third Sunday after Trinity : — Pity the Poor Pharisees .... 506 

Fourth Sunday after Trinity : — Going to God's Gallery .... 521 

5 



VI TABLE OF CONTENTS. 

l'AGE 

Fifth Sunday after Trinity : — How the Savior Caught Simon . . 536 

Sixth Sunday after Trinity : — Admission Above . . . . . . 548 

Seventh Sunday after Trinity : — Seven Loaves of Bread and Seven 

Baskets of Crumbs 559 

Eighth Sunday after Trinity : — Congregational Conscience . . . 573 

Ninth Sunday after Trinity : — Those Dirty Dollars 588 

Tenth Sunday after Trinity: — Why Did Jesus Cry? .... 603 

Eleventh Sunday after Trinity : — The Heavenly Hunter . . . 617 

Twelfth Sunday after Trinity : — The Two Sides of Salvation . . 630 

Thirteenth Sunday after Trinity : — The Lord's Lodge .... 644 
Fourteenth Sunday after Trinity : — The Men, the Master, and 

the Man 657 

Fifteenth Sunday after Trinity : — A Call for Catechumens . . 674 

Sixteenth Sunday after Trinity : — A Rumor of the Redeemer . -686 

Seventeenth Sunday after Trinity: — Is it Right? 699 

Eighteenth Sunday after Trinity : — Silenced Sinners . . . . 712 

Nineteenth Sunday after Trinity : — Sick Sinners 7.23 

Twentieth Sunday after Trinity : — Speechless Sinners .... 733 

Twenty-first Sunday after Trinity : — One O'clock 743 

Twenty-second Sunday after Trinity : — Two Things Sinners Can- 
not Do with Their Sins 753 

Reformation : — John's Vision of the Reformation 765 

Twenty-third Sunday after Trinity : — Young America . . . 785 

Twenty-fourth Sunday after Trinity: — Twice Twelve are Twelve. 798 

Twenty-fifth Sunday after Trinity : — Dangerous Deceptions . 808 

Twenty-sixth Sunday after Trinity : — The Apostles' Creed on the . 

Day of Judgment .822 

Sermon on Secret Societies 835 



PULPIT POWER. 



ADDRESS DELIVERED AT SPRINGFIELD, OHIO, SUNDAY EVENING, MAY ist, 1904, 
TO THE THEOLOGICAL GRADUATES OF WITTENBERG SEMINARY. 



yyTlTHOUT any apology whatever, I appear before 
wJLJl you this evening in the interest of the Church of 
the Lord Jesus Christ, purchased with His blood. 
I deem it an honor to have this privilege, and thank you* 
for the same. My conscience would give me no rest for 
appearing before you this evening with an unwritten, un- 
finished address, were it not for the fact that I never 
could finish a discourse until it was delivered. I have 
spent many hours a day for 144 years preparing the un- 
finished message which I bring to you this hour. For 
forty-five years my grandfather worked hard preparing 
this address; my mother — one of the best mothers that 
ever lived — began where he left off, and worked on it for 
fifty-six years ; the rest of the time I have been working along 
on it until this very hour, and therefore, as stated above, 
I have no apology for bringing you this unpolished, unfin- 
ished, unwritten address. 

As Napoleon stood before the Pyramids, we stand be- 
fore my subject, one of the greatest powers in the world, 
— a power that hurled the army of Egypt into the Bed 
Sea — a power that made Felix tremble — a power that 
shook the seven hills of Eome with "words that were half 
battles" — a power that to-day could turn the world up- 
side down — I mean 

PULPIT POWER. 

May God help me now to show you how this power is 

I. Gathered, 
II. Given. 

1 



% Z THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

Before any power can be given, it must be gathered. 
There is an erroneous idea among many young ministers 
that pulpit power consists simply in oratory. Real pulpit 
power must be inherited, acquired, charismatic and pastoral. 

I. There are some powers that are inherited, — a strong 
personality, enthusiastic activity, and inborn eloquence. 
When God makes a bird to fly, He gives it wings; an 
animal to leap and run, He gives it legs; and when He 
wants a man to possess pulpit power, He gives him a strong 
personality. The mother, as a rule, gives her mental gifts 
to her son, and a father his mental gifts to the daughter. 
There are many women who think they should have the 
right to preach the Gospel, not knowing the great fact that 
the sons who are ministers are representatives of their 
mothers. The truth is that the greatest pulpit powers 
have always inherited a strong personality from the 
mother. A young man not long ago applied at a theo- 
logical seminary for the purpose of preparing for the min- 
istry. He was narrow chested; it was hard for him to 
breathe; his face was anything but pleasant, and would 
have caused any one, however serious, to smile simply to 
behold him. The Lord never intended a man that has 
poor lungs to breathe, to be a pulpit power any more than 
he would expect a bird without wings to fly. 

Then there is an enthusiastic activity which a man should 
inherit to become a pulpit power. It is said of Jesus that He 
was, like Moses, "A prophet mighty in word and deed." 
The Holy Spirit did not record the sermons of the apostles, 
but their Acts, showing that to have pulpit power there 
must be action. All great preachers have been born active 
children. Show me a man that moves along as though 
he did not care when he arrived at his point, and I will 
show you a man who will never be a power in the pulpit. 
The Lord God never called a lazy man to the ministry. 

Another inherited power is inborn eloquence, — not such 
an eloquence as is manufactured in the schools. When 
Demosthenes was asked to define oratory, his first answer 
was action; his second was action; and his third answer was 
action. While Beecher is no model as a theologian, he is a 
demonstration of the fact that eloquence is inborn. He 



PULPIT POWER. 6 

did not stand high in the schools, nor in the seminary. 
His first ministry was in Lawrenceburg, Indiana, a little 
church where he himself acted as janitor, and this little 
church was supposed to be about the kind that he should 
serve, but there was something about this man from in- 
fancy; a self-forgetful, determined foe of wrong doing. It 
was this spirit that made him take up the sword to fight 
against slavery; it was this power that made him go to 
England and silence the greatest mob that ever tried to 
down an orator. What was it that made Beecher the 
great man that he was? It was a strong personality, an 
enthusiastic activity, and inborn eloquence. 

2. Pulpit power is not only gathered by inheritance, 
but must be acquired. "Knowledge is power." This knowl- 
edge must be acquired of the laborer, of the schools, of public 
speakers. 

With regard to labor, a man, to have the sympathy 
of the people, must understand how they earn their bread. 
Moses was a shepherd; Paul, a tent-maker; Jesus, a car- 
penter. The masses earn their bread with the sweat of 
their faces, and unless a minister of the Gospel has earned 
his bread by manual labor, and has learned to know the 
value of a dollar, he never can enter into sympathy with 
the masses. He must know their lines of thought; their 
wrong ideas; their right ideas; he must understand why 
they think as they do, and how to remedy their wrong 
thoughts. He must be familiar with their language. A 
powerful minister will not seek large words when smaller 
ones will be better understood. As an example of the 
right use of words, study the character of Dr. Luther. 
When at the Wartburg he let his beard grow, walked on 
the streets and in the markets, in order that he might, 
unknown, be among the masses and catch their language, 
so that he could make the Bible speak to Europe the best 
German that could be understood by the people. His 
Bible to-day is the model of all translations. His sermons 
were a power because they could not be misunderstood. 

The acquired knowledge must not only be of the la- 
borer, but also of the schools — and, best of all, of the 
catechetical school. The Lacedemonians, when required 



4 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

to give fifty children as hostages, chose rather to give fifty 
of the most eminent men of the state, whose principles 
were formed. They understood the value of educating 
children, and the great responsibility of allowing them 
to get into the hands of poor teachers. Kemember the 
old proverb, "Cave ab homine unius libri" — Beware of 
the man of one book. In the 20th chapter of Revelations, 
and the 12th verse, we learn the size of God's library. It 
consists of books and a book. We know which two* of 
these books are — one is the Word of God that lies before 
me. Jesus says "Heaven and earth shall pass away, but 
My Word shall not pass away." We know that another 
book in God's library is the Book of Life, in which the 
names of His children are recorded. In Revelations 10, 
we read of an angel of God that stood with one foot upon 
the land and the other upon the sea, and held in his 
hand a little book, an open book, which John was to re- 
ceive, and eat, and devour; it was to be bitter and sweet 
to him; and then, after devouring this book, he was to 
proclaim it to the nations in many lands. This same angel 
that spoke in Revelations 10 is the one that spoke in 
Revelations 14, where he prophesies the great Reforma-' 
tion of the sixteenth century. I have no time to-night 
to prove in detail what I am now asserting, but I claim 
to be able to do it, that this little book, this third book 
in God's library is none other than the little catechism 
of Dr. Luther, which has to-day on earth seventy millions 
of Christians, brought to the Lord by its teachings; this 
little book has done more to make an intelligent Christi- 
anity than any other little book on God's earth; it is the 
cream of the Word of God; it is bitter and sweet. The 
ten commandments are sweet because they give us the 
love of God; they are bitter because they condemn every 
sinner. The Gospel, as found in the Apostles' Creed, is 
sweet to the believer in Christ; it is bitter to him who 
rejects the Savior. The Lord's prayer — the model of all 
prayers — is the sweetest prayer that was ever heard, and 
yet it is bitter to the one who does not believe in Jesus 
Christ, and come to the Father in the name of His only 
Son. The subject of Holy Baptism is sweet to him who 



PULPIT POWER. 5 

has entered into the covenant of God; it will be bitter 
to him who has not accepted Jesus Christ by this covenant. 
The Lord's Supper is sweet to him who believes the real 
truth that "in, with and under the bread and wine" he re- 
ceives the true body and blood of Jesus Christ; it will be 
bitter to him who does not discern the body of Christ, 
and therefore eats and drinks damnation to his own soul. 
Thus this little book should be learned by every minister 
of the Gospel and digested until it becomes a part of him- 
self, and thus feed the people on this great truth. This is 
acquired knowledge. 

Some rich men have found great trouble in explaining 
one of the words of Jesus Christ, that it is as impossible 
for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven, as it is for 
a camel to pass through a needle's eye. In order to make 
it possible for the rich man to get to heaven, some have 
tried to make us believe that this needle's eye is the 
small gate at the entrance of the walls of Jerusalem; some 
have tried to make us believe that it refers to a small 
cord used in the navy, and how hard it would be to pass 
that through a needle's eye. Be those interpretations as 
they may, one thing is clear to me, that a minister of the 
Gospel, in the Lutheran Church, who does not make dili- 
gent use of God's library, of this third little book, the 
catechism, is so little that he could play fox and geese 
in the eye of a cambric needle and never touch it. 

We may acquire knowledge for pulpit power in the 
secular schools. God can get along without our knowledge 
but much better without our ignorance. How many min- 
isters of the Gospel do not even know how to read well! 
This power can be gained in the secular schools. How 
many there are who are not interesting because they are 
trying to imitate others! No two birds alike, no two leaves 
alike, no two trees alike, no two preachers alike, and that 
young minister who tries to be any one but himself has 
lost his power. The world is hungry for originality and 
real power is the result of thinking, taught also in the sec- 
ular schools. 

Another branch that can be thoroughly studied in the 
secular schools is profane history, which shows us the hand 



6 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

of God in Providence. In the Bible we read what is com- 
ing to pass; in profane history we read that these things 
have come to pass, and the man who in the pulpit cannot 
by secular history demonstrate the truth of Divine his- 
tory has lost much of his power. 

We also acquire knowledge in the theological schools, 
and let me say right here that the Christian college is by 
far better than state universities, where no definite re- 
ligion is taught; and the theological languages are the 
best in the world. There is one language that a Lutheran 
minister ought to be master of, no difference how many 
other languages he may possess, and that is the German. 
Our greatest treasures of the Reformation age are in Ger- 
man, and he who cannot go down into those deep mines, 
has stripped himself of great power. I pity any English 
Lutheran minister who cannot make use of German works 
of theology. The theological ministry is the best. It is 
not pulpit power simply to be able to make a speech, to 
talk about the things of this world, to say witty things, 
but there is a theological science as well as any other 
science; and science is truth, and truth never contradicts 
itself. What people need is a ministry that is in har- 
mony with itself, and in harmony with God's Word. 

Another source of knowledge is from public speakers. 
The minister must not simply learn from the best minis- 
ters of the Gospel how to preach, but he should not fail 
to learn of the best actors, of the best lecturers and of 
the best lawyers. Garrick said to an unsuccessful preacher, 
"You speak of eternal verities and what you know to be 
truth, as if you hardly believed what you were saying 
yourself, whereas I utter what I know to be unreal and 
untrue as if I believed it in my very soul." How many 
ministers of the Gopsel preach God's eternal truth as if 
it were a lie! How many actors teach lies as if they were 
the truth! What a power every minister of the Gospel 
would be if he would learn a few things of the greatest 
actors in proclaiming God's eternal truth! By this I do 
not mean to say that we should imitate the actor in his 
actions, but in his earnestness, in the determination to 
convince our people that what we say is true How often 



PULPIT POWER. 7 

we claim that the minister cannot preach as the lecturer 
lectures, for the reason that the lecturer spends years in 
travel in order to condense his thoughts into one hour's 
speech; but let us not forget that the minister of the Gos- 
pel has not only one week to prepare his sermon for 
Sunday, but he has a whole life, and the last week, and 
the last hour, and God's help in that hour, and he is 
weak in the pulpit who does not crowd that whole life 
and the last hour into every sermon. There is a passage 
in the Scriptures where Jesus calls Himself our Advocate, 
pleading with the Father. Let us not forget that this word 
advocate means lawyer. How often we have stood in the 
court room and have seen the lawyer plead for his guilty 
client with an earnestness that puts the ministers to shame! 
Is there any place on earth where a man should feel his 
responsibility more, or have a weightier case than the min- 
ister of the Gospel Avlien he stands before immortal souls, 
with life uncertain, and eternity before us, and the judg- 
ment coming? Is there any place w T here more earnestness 
should be shown than there? Can we not learn from the 
lawyer how to plead for the salvation of immortal souls? 

3. Another source of pulpit power is charismatic. By 
this power we mean those gifts that come alone from the 
Holy Spirit. I mean regeneration, conversion, and sancti- 
fication. 

As well might a blind man teach people how to see, 
or a deaf mute teach a chorus of singers, as a minister 
of the Gospel who himself is not born again try to teach 
other people how to be saved. Such people are blind 
leaders of the blind. The first requisite of pulpit power 
is that the old sinful heart should be newly created. A 
minister of the Gospel, true to his calling, is as much a 
new creation as a new world, if it were by the Word 
of God any moment to fly into yonder space. 

A minister of the Gospel must not simply be a newly 
born man, but he must be a converted man. Christ said 
to Peter, "When thou art converted, strengthen thy 
brethren." A man can be regenerated in an instant, and 
only once in life. Conversion should take place every 
time a man sins — he should turn around and come back 



8 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

to his God. One reason some ministers have never pos- 
sessed the power they should, is because they have never 
publicly acknowledged a single mistake, nor asked any 
one for forgiveness. Ministers of the Gospel, like all poor 
sinners, will make mistakes, and sometimes they are of 
such a grievous character that it is questionable whether 
they should ever return to the pulpit. Should this ever 
occur in your life — which God forbid — be sure to make 
your repentance as notorious as your sin was. Never 
offer to step into the pulpit when you have committed 
a grievous sin without making your confession as public 
as the sin itself. Surely if any one in this world should 
strive to lead a life of perfection, it should be the man 
of God who is to lead others heavenward. The celebrated 
Massillon says: "From the moment I became one of the 
Lord's ministers, I have been either a scourge in His hands 
for the affliction of men, or a blessing sent down from 
heaven for their salvation." The Lord says in Jeremiah 
23 : 1, "Woe be unto the pastors that destroy and scatter 
the sheep of my pasture!' 7 In one of Zoroaster's fables, 
a man was wholly immersed in the fiery lake, except one 
heel, upon which he once turned to relieve a lamb en- 
tangled in a thicket. How then could an uesanctified min- 
ister escape even with one heel, if he did not try to live 
a life of sanctification? The ancient rhetoricians defined 
an orator as "a good man." A man's Christian life speaks 
in the pulpit. The star of the east not only showed the 
wise men the way, but went before them. If a minister 
of the Gospel will not turn on his heels to help humanity, 
if he will not walk on paths that lead heavenward, if he 
has no desire to walk on higher planes day by day, how 
shall he lead others? All these are charismatic gifts — 
gifts of the Holy Spirit, neither inherited nor acquired. 

4. Another source of gathering pulpit power is pastoral, 
— I mean the Divine call; the Samaritan love, and conscien- 
tious preparation. 

In the last chapter of Acts, 24 to 26, we learn how 
God calls men. When Judas had taken his life and 
another was to be chosen in his place, the disciples sought 
a man who had been with Christ from His baptism to 



PULPIT POWER. 9 

the end; such men were needed as had been thoroughly 
instructed in God's Holy Word. Two were chosen; prayer 
was offered for God to do the choosing, and the act con- 
sisted of casting lots, and the lot fell upon Matthias. No 
Minister of the Gospel can be a power if he does not feel 
that God has placed him there. I do hope the day will 
come when no minister will write from church to church 
to get a position. Does not God know where he is labor- 
ing, and does not God know where to find him if He wants 
him? Go where God calls you. If you want to secure 
a wider field, fill full and overflow a narrow field. Do 
not think for a moment that the larger field for which 
you are worthy will never find you. Go where God calls 
you. Do your work so well there that He will lift you 
higher, and when trials and troubles do come, and you 
know that God has placed you there, you will have a 
special power and comfort. 

Another source of pastoral power is Samaritan love. 
Love every one, and be bound to none. We are living in 
a day when many young ministers think they must join 
this organization or that organization to get influence and 
power. No man that has any real power would join a lit- 
tle human organization to get power. By that very act 
he acknowledges his weakness. Teach one by one, as Jesus 
did Mcodemus, the Samaritan woman, and the young ruler, 
how to come to Christ. The public hearer is prejudiced; 
the private hearer is taken by surprise. Therefore, as a 
real power depend alone on God, and love humanity. In 
this very city there is a window in the home of a secret 
society with the picture of the Great Samaritan on it. 
Never has the real teaching of that lesson been more 
abused. These orders from beginning to end are selfish; 
their object is to help those who belong to them; those 
who have been able to pay their dues; those who have 
been well and strong and able to make a living before 
they entered. Let us look at the lesson of the great Sa- 
maritan. A man is going to Jericho; he falls among 
thieves; they rob him; they take his very raiment; they 
wound him and let him lie by the roadside, half dead. 
Along comes a man that belongs to the same order, to 



10 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

the same church — a priest; he looks at him; he finds 
out that this man fell among robbers; he imagines that 
he himself will be the next victim, and lo! he runs down 
to Jericho, and lets the poor man lie there, dying. Along 
comes another man belonging to that order — to that same 
church — a Levite; he takes a little more courage, walks 
across the way, looks at the dying man, but the thought 
comes to him, "I will be the next victim," and he starts 
down the road to Jericho, and lets his own brother lie 
there dying. Along comes the third man — not a man of 
the same order — not a man of the same church — con- 
sidered an historic enemy — a Samaritan. We would ex- 
pect him to drive the dagger into his heart, but no, he sees 
the heaving breast, the pale lips, the glazed eyes, the sweat 
on his forehead; this man is a physician; he takes the 
wine and pours it into the wound; he must have torn 
his own garment to wrap those wounds, for the dying man 
has been robbed of his raiment. This Samaritan lifts up 
the man, puts him on his beast of burden, takes him down 
the road to a little inn, carries him in, waits on him all 
night, and in the morning, when this supposed dying man 
regains consciousness he sees his wounds wrapped, finds 
himself in a strange place, looks into the face of the 
supposed enemy, who proved to be a dear friend. He 
asks one question, 'How did I come here — what has 
happened?' The stranger explains how he found him 
robbed and dying, how he brought him to this little hotel 
and has been watching over him all night, and now he is 
about to leave. 'But who will pay this bill?' 'Never 
mind. Come here, hotel man; take good care of this man; 
I will pay the bill, and if there are any further charges I 
will pay them when I come back.' Now, my dear friends, 
who was this Good Samaritan? Was he an order man? 
No. He was a man who had Samaritan love, and we must 
be blind if we cannot see that this is a picture of Jesus 
Christ, the Great Samaritan, who loved humanity, and 
unless we, as ministers of the Gospel, have a wider love 
than any order and any narrow-minded denomination, and 
help a man because he is a man, we are in harmony with 
the very spirit that is manifested in many of the orders 



PULPIT POWER. 11 

of the day. I therefore urge upon you to cultivate the Sa- 
maritan love. Help wherever help is needed. When you 
see a man in want, give him a helping hand, lift him up, 
and you are getting power for the pulpit. 

The pastor-preacher is the strongest power we can have. 
Some ministers imagine that they have to leave their con- 
gregations because they preach too plainly. This is not 
true. The secret of their moving is that they have been 
poor pastors. Let a man be a thorough pastor among 
his people, helping in time of need, standing by the bed- 
side of the sick, comforting in time of death, and he can 
talk to those people in his church as plainly as he pleases, 
and they would tear the clothing off their backs to retain 
his services. 

Another pastoral power is conscientious preparation. 
When asked why he took such pains upon his pictures, 
Appelles said, "I paint for eternity." Demosthenes con- 
sidered every man a pest of society who did not prepare 
well before proposing anything in public. A minister's 
time cannot all be demanded by the people. He must go 
to his study, and there, on bended knees, must ponder 
over the W^ord of God, and conscientiously use every mo- 
ment for the very best possible preparation. In order to 
prepare well he must not forget prayer. The Puritan de- 
bater took notes. Afterwards nothing was found on these 
notes but these words: "More light, Lord. More light, 
Lord." Theodorus said of Luther: "I overheard him in 
prayer, but good God, with what life and spirit did he 
pray! It was with so much reverence as if he were speak- 
ing to God, yet with so much confidence as if he were 
speaking to his friend." Let us then prayerfully dig out 
God's great truth and gather in the message to be de- 
livered from the pulpit. It has well been said by one who 
himself was a great pulpit power, "Go from the sick room 
and death bed to the pulpit." McCheyne of Dundee found 
it good before entering the pulpit to visit a sick one, and 
"take a look over the verge." I would recommend to every 
young minister to visit as many of his sick people on 
Saturday as possible, and, if you have time and there 
should be one passing into eternity on Sunday morning. 



12 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

go to that bedside and from there to the pulpit. Gather 
up these powers, and, with a good opening service, enter 
the pulpit ready to exercise them. 

Let us notice, 

II. Hoto Pulpit Power should he Given. 

Pulpit power must be given with Christ's attention; with 
Christ's help; through Christ's channels; with Christ's au- 
thority. 

1. We must have attention. "Sin cannot be taken 
out of man as Eve was out of Adam's side, Avhile men are 
asleep. 77 Spurgeon says, "To me it is an annoyance if 
even a blind man does not look at me with his face. 77 We 
should learn how to get attention from Christ himself — 
speaking under the skies, with His Eyes, and with His sur- 
prise. 

Jesus delivered most of His sermons out in the open 
air, on the sea, on the hillsides, under the skies. How 
many churches are dark and gloomy, with windows closed. 
Is it any wonder that the layman falls asleep? Spurgeon 
at one time walked around a little church, took his cane 
and broke a light in every window. The council discovered 
that the windows were broken, and offered a reward for 
the culprit that broke them. Spurgeon agreed with them 
that a reward should be given, but it should be turned 
over to the culprit that broke them, and then stated that 
he himself was the culprit; that he could not preach where 
there was no light and no fresh air. 

We should not only preach under the skies, but with 
Christ 7 s eyes. Eemember what a look from Jesus did for 
Peter. Peter had denied his Master, the old fisher spirit 
came back to him, and he cursed and damned. Jesus knew 
what Peter was doing, but did not rebuke him openly, 
never said a word to him, but looked at him, and looked 
at him, and kept on looking, until Peter went out and wept 
bitterly. Here is an argument for preaching without a 
manuscript. How can a man finish his sermon during 
the week, or go to the barrel and get an old sermon, and 
stand before his people, and pray God, the Holy Spirit, 
to help him, when all who hear know that that old sermon 



PULPIT POWER. L3 

was finished long ago; and how can he preach eye to eye, 
and keep his eyes on the old manuscript? To have pulpit 
power we must not look up at the walls, or at the ceiling 

— the audience is not hanging up there; they are down 
in the pews, and God has put power not only into th<> 
Word of God, but into the tongue and into the eye, and 
every facial expression, and he who will not cast his eyes 
upon the eyes of his people, has lost pulpit power. 

He must preach not only with Christ's eyes, but with 
His surprise. Jesus used surprise power, and so should 
we. Why should you say everything as some one else said 
it? Why say things in a way that everybody expects? 
Jesus said, "Blessed are the poor in spirit" — the people 
would have expected, "Blessed are the rich in spirit." 
Jesus said, "Blessed are they that hunger and thirst." 

— We would have thought He would say, "Blessed are they 
that are not hungry and not thirsty." God's Word is always 
saying just the opposite of what we would expect, and there- 
fore it is so interesting. Let the minister of the Gospel preach 
the old Gospel, but in the way that God gives to him, and not 
be an imitator of others. 

2. Next, he should preach with Christ's help. By His 
help he should pray, and preach, and hide himself. 

Beware of long, loud prayers. A professor of theology 
was preaching in a United Presbyterian church in Colum- 
bus not long ago, and his prayer was so long and so loud 
that a little boy at his father's table said, at the noon 
hour, "Papa, I am sure God heard that prayer to-day.'* 
"Why, my son?" "Because it was so long and so loud that He 
could not help but hear it." Let us beware that we do not pray 
so long in the pulpit that people get the impression we 
are done praying. The prayer in the pulpit should not 
begin there, nor end there; it should be but a continuing 
of the prayer that was begun long before; it should con- 
tinue throughout the sermon. It is said of Luther that he^ 
preached as if he pulled his sermons by prayer down from 
heaven. Thus we should pray with Christ's help. 

Not only should we pray with Christ's help, but preach 
with His help. I have spoken before of a conscientious 
preparation. By that I do not mean that a man should 



14 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

finish his sermon before he comes to the pulpit. I do 
mean that a man should prepare as well as he possibly 
can to the very moment when he enters the pulpit; that 
he should preach, standing before immortal souls, in the 
presence of his God, by the help of God, expecting Him 
to help him in every sentence of that sermon. 

And, furthermore, with Christ's help, he should hide 
behind the Master. Moses and Elijah left Jesus only with 
the disciples on the Mount of Transfiguration. Pulpit 
power will leave the people with Jesus only before them. 
Two Americans went to London to hear two of the greatest 
modern preachers. They first went to Parker's church; 
they listened to a most eloquent sermon, and, on going 
home, one said to the other, "What a great man!" These 
same two went to Spurgeon's tabernacle, and after hear- 
ing him went home, and one said to the other, "What 
a great Savior!" There you get the difference between 
hiding Christ behind the preacher, and hiding the preacher 
behind Christ. He who wishes to possess real pulpit power 
must hide himself behind the Savior. 

3. In the next place, this power must be given through 
Christ's own channels — the Word of God, Holy Baptism, 
and the Lord's Supper. 

One minister of our own country preached to large 
audiences, and his sermons were published in nearly all 
the secular papers. To-day the minister is dead, the 
churches are all burned down, and the congregations can 
not be found — a pile of ashes is left of that ministry. 
What Was the trouble? He did not use the channels that 
God selected as the means of grace. Let us beware that 
we do not get away from the Inspired Word of God. The 
Word itself is a power. It is sharper than a two-edged 
sword; it is a power of which Paul said he was not 
ashamed; it is a power that breaketh better than a ham- 
mer. 

This Word connected with water God has seen fit to 
make a channel for the forgiveness of sins. "Arise and 
be baptized, and wash away thy sins." 

This Word connected with bread and wine, according 
to Christ's instruction, has become a channel through 



PULPIT POWER. 15 

which He gives himself to us. By prayer we go to God; 
in the means of grace, God comes to us. Let us therefore 
hold fast to the Word of God, and the Holy Sacraments, 
and we shall possess pulpit power. 

4. Finally, we should give forth this power with Christ's 
authority. We should know God's will; we should know the 
world's needs; and then demand obedience. 

Five hundred years before Christ, iEschylus said, "A 
state that is prosperous honors the gods." We ought to 
know that the world needs God and salvation. A min- 
ister of our own church a few Sundays ago wanted to 
introduce our Weekly Lutheran Sunday School paper. In 
order to do so, he gave copies to the children, and asked 
them to decide whether they wanted the paper or not. 
God pity the preacher that does not know what the chil- 
dren need! What respect could those children have for 
this minister? They would look upon him as an unsafe 
leader, as a man who himself did not know what they 
needed. We should come with Christ's authority; know 
His will, know the world's needs, and then demand obe- 
dience. 

What should we demand of our people? I answer, first, 
the Lutheran faith. There was a time when many Luther- 
ans, so-called, imitated other churches that tried to throw 
away the catechism, and to gather in the people by hun- 
dreds at a time, instead of by catechetical instruction. 
Let us not forget here what Theodore Cuyler said, "Hand 
picked apples keep the longest." Who has not seen con- 
gregations of hundreds gathered in a few weeks by wrong 
methods, and in a few months where were they? All scat- 
tered to the winds. The Lutheran faith demands that 
every man study God's Word, believe that Word, and cling 
to it until he dies. I have no time this evening to rehearse 
the Lutheran faith, but it is in that little book, concern- 
ing which we. spoke a while ago; it is found in the Augs- 
burg confession; it is found in the Book of Concord. These 
books will need no changing until God Almighty changes 
His Word. Accept God's Word and give me your atten- 
tion, and I will compel you to accept the Lutheran doc- 
trine. I do not say that other denominations have no 



16 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

truth — they could not exist without truth; but I do say 
that none of them have any truth that we have not, and 
we have some truths which none of them have. When 
the Eomish priest holds the crucifix before the dying man 
and points him alone to Christ — in that moment that 
priest is a Lutheran. 

Demand obedience, and not only the Lutheran faith, but 
demand also Moravian consecration. The Moravian church 
has one missionary for every fifty-eight communicants. If 
other churches did the same, we would have four hundred 
thousand missionaries — enough to evangelize the world. 
"Can you go as a missionary to Greenland/' said Zinzen- 
dorf to a Moravian brother at Herrnhut. "Yes." "Can you 
go to-morrow?" "If the cobbler has finished my shoes, I 
can go to-morrow." That is an obedience and a conse- 
cration that ought to be found in every Lutheran church. 
Think of a large Synod in this country with only one 
foreign missionary. What we need is not only a Luth- 
eran faith, but a Moravian consecration. Our gifts should 
be consecrated to the Lord; our sons should be conse- 
crated to the Lord; we should make sacrifices to bring the 
Gospel to the whole world in a very short time. 

And let us not be afraid of a little Wesleyan zeal. In a con- 
ference of ministers a short time ago the question arose, How 
long shall we preach? One said thirty minutes; another said 
forty minutes; another said, "Why, it takes me fifty minutes 
to warm up." A correct and beautiful retort was given by an- 
other when he said, "If it takes you fifty minutes to warm up, 
why don't you go outside and warm up and come in and 
save the congregation that pain?" Wesley said, "If I 
had three hundred men who feared nothing but God, hated 
nothing but sin, and were determined to know nothing 
among men but Jesus Christ and Him crucified, I would 
set the world on fire." "Send us men," said a heathen 
convert, "with hot hearts." When I was a boy in our old 
district we felt that we needed a new school house. The 
old school house was full of cracks, shaky and ready to 
fall down. It was suggested that we take the poker and 
bore holes through the walls. The old iron poker was 
tried, but it would not work. Another wiser scholar sug* 



PULPIT POWER. 17 

gested the idea of putting it into the fire until it was red 
hot, and this was done, and with little effort one hole 
after the other was burned through the wall, and it was 
not long until a new school house stood where the old 
one was. I do not wish to commend the meanness of the 
boys, but I do contend that a blunt iron, red hot, will 
pierce quicker than a sharp iron, cold. And it is not hard 
to make the application. I would say with Wesley, if the 
thirty thousand Lutheran ministers of this world feared 
nothing but God, hated nothing but sin, and were deter- 
mined to know nothing among men but Jesus Christ and 
Him crucified, I would take them and set the world on 
fire. May God hasten the day when every minister of the 
Gospel will be the power that God wants him to be ! 



ADVENT SUNDAY. 



A REMARKABLE RIDE. 



Matt. 21 : 1-9. 



HND when they drew nigh unto Jerusalem and were come to Bethphage, 
unto the Mount of Olives, then sent Jesus two disciples, saying unto 
them : "Go into the village over against you, and straightway ye shall 
find an ass tied, and a colt with her ; loose them and bring them unto Me. 
And if any man say ought unto you, ye shall say : The Lord hath need of 
them ; and staightway he will send them." All this was done that it 
might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet, saying : "Tell ye the 
daughter of Zion, Behold thy King cometh unto thee, meek, and sitting upon 
an ass, and a colt the foal of an ass." And the disciples went and did as 
Jesus commanded them ; and brought the ass and the colt, and put on them 
their clothes, and they set Him thereon. And a very great multitude spread 
their garments in the way; others cut down branches from the trees and 
strewed them in the way. And the multitudes that went before, and that 
followed, cried, saying : Hosanna to the Son of David ! Blessed is He that 
cometh in the name of the Lord ! Hosanna in the highest. 

Sanctify us, O Lord, through Thy truth; 
Thy Word is truth. Amen. 



Dearly Beloved : — 

This is the Christian New Year. The Christian year be- 
gins with Advent, which means Coming. Christ is Coming. 
The Christian year begins before the civil year for the reason 
that the Church of God has another Sun beside the sun in the 
sky, — the Sun of Kighteousness — , that rises with healing 
in His wings. We sang of that Son a few moments ago : 

"God is our Sun, whose daily light, 
Our joy and safety brings; 
Our feeble frame lies safe at night, 
Beneath His sheltering wings." 

In other words, the Church of God, as we heard in the 
Sermon on the Mount, should seek first the kingdom of God 

18 



ADVENT SUNDAY. . 19 

and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added 
unto us. 

The Church year begins before the civil year .because the 
salvation of souls is worth more than the government of the 
world. 

We find the Church year not only begins before the civil 
year, but includes the greatest progress that the Church of 
God has made in the selection of Bible texts. There was a 
time when the people found fault with the idea of a pericope 
system — that the Church should select the texts for the 
preacher. The result was that the ministry had no system 
in its work and was preaching in a haphazard way instead 
of preaching the whole plan of salvation, as selected wisely 
by the Church of God. 

We are now in an age of progress when every Church is 
beginning to recognize that a Sunday-school will make greater 
progress if every school on earth is teaching the same lesson 
the same Sunday ; and what a glorious thought it is that in 
all the Lutheran Churches of Europe and in seventy-five 
per cent, of the Lutheran Churches of America, the Gospel 
is being heard to-day from this identical text selected for the 
first Sunday in Advent. 

This Church year includes in its first half all the great 
festivals of the persons of God. Christmas is coming. Christ- 
mas is the festival of God the Father, who gave His own be- 
loved Son, Jesus Christ, to save the world. Hosanna to the 
^Highest ! 

Easter is the festival, with all its surrounding festivals, 
of God the Son, who on Good Friday laid down His life for 
the sins of the world, slept in the new grave over the old 
Sabbath, arose the Lord's Day, conquered Death — arose 
with healing in His wings. Hosanna to Jesus Christ! 

Pentecost, that glorious baptism of the Holy Ghost, the 
festival of the Holy Spirit, baptizing the new Church and the 
missionary churches of the world. Hossanna to the Holy 
Spirit ! 

Then, beginning in the last half of the Church year, the 
doctrine of the Trinity — Father, Son and Holy Ghost, with 
all His dealings with humanity until it ends with the coming 



20 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

of the Lord again to judge the quick and the dead. This, my 
friends, is the Church year. 

Like much interesting history, we find that momentous 
occasions are connected with the dumb brutes of the world. 
Had it not been for that celebrated horse which Alexander 
rode when he met Darius, the whole history of the world 
would have been changed ; had it not been for the warsteed 
that Gustavus Adolphus rode, and its action after the hero 
fell from its back, the victory would have been against the Ee- 
formation instead of for it; had it not been for the black 
steed that Sheridan rode from Winchester, the history of the 
United States would have been changed ; and the remarkable 
thing is that the first lesson selected for the Church year tells 
us of a most remarkable ride — the King of Heaven riding 
into Jerusalem on the colt of an ass! I call your attention 
this morning to 

A REMARKABLE RIDE. 

Let us notice: 

I. The Christ that rode that day. 
II. The colt that bore Him away. 
III. The Christians of that day. 

1. The Christ that rode that day is man, "the son of 
David." You will remember that in the Garden of Eden it 
was promised that the seed of woman should bruise the ser- 
pent's head. You will remember that the promise was re- 
peatedly given to Abraham that in his seed all the nations of 
the earth should be blessed. You will remember that Isaiah 
said : "Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a Son, and 
shall call His name Emanuel." He should be the seed of 
woman. You will remember that the mother of Jesus went 
to Bethlehem, because it was the city of David, and gave 
birth to the "Son of David." And now it is this same Son of 
David — the God-man — that is riding the colt into Jerusalem. 

Not only do we notice that He is man, but surely He must 
be God. "Glory to God in the highest!" said the angels, and 
the people on that day began to sing, "Blessed is He that 
cometh in the name of the Lord: Hosanna in the highest!" 
They sang as the angels sang, because they knew that this 
One riding on the colt is none other than the Son of God. 



ADVENT SUNDAY. 21 

Notice, if you please, how this Son of God is Omniscient. 
They have just come from Bethany, between Bethany and 
Bethphage, to the Mount of Olives ; on the other side of the 
hill, unseen by the disciples, Jesus beholds through the moun- 
tain a colt and an ass tied. It is God that sees through the 
mountain. He tells the disciples exactly what they will find ; 
exactly what the owner of the ass will say. In other words, 
He was the Omniscient God. And see Him again, as He sits 
on a colt, the most stubborn of all colts in the world, un- 
broken, and rides it into Jerusalem, as if it were a broken 
steed. 

None but God could have seen what Jesus saw that day. 
None but God could have done what Jesus did that day. In 
other words, the King that rides into Jerusalem is the God- 
man — Son of God and Son of Man. 

Not only was He God and Man, but this same Christ wa^ 
also King. It is said here : "Behold they King cometh unto 
thee, meek, and sitting upon an ass, and a colt the foal of an 
ass." In times of war kings usually ride steeds of war. But 
we find that the great King of Heaven does not ride on a 
horse. He rides upon an animal that was always an emblem 
of peace and not of war. You remember that the prophet 
said : "His name shall be called Wonderful ; Counsellor ; the 
Mighty God; the Everlasting Father; the Prince of Peace." 
The prophet Zechariah said He should come riding into Jeru- 
salem, meek, and on an ass. Oh, behold the King! How 
meek He comes to His people. And not only did He come 
then, but He still comes to us. He comes to us this morn- 
ing, through the Word of God and the Holy Sacraments. 
Remember that this same King said to the people: "Lo, I 
am with you alway, even unto the end of the world." And, 
"Where two or three are gathered together in My name, I 
will be in the midst of them." 

I am not standing here this morning telling you some old 
story that never can be repeated. I am telling you this morn- 
ing of a living King, an ever present King, of a King who is 
coming to us, and does come this morning, and every time 
that you hear the Word of God. It is the same King that 
came to you when you were baptized. You were baptized in 
the name of the Father, and of the King that rode into 



22 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

Jerusalem on a colt, and in the name of the Holy Ghost ; and 
when yon and I renew our baptismal covenant, the King 
comes to us and raises us up to a new life ; as the apostle said : 
"We are buried with Christ by baptism into death ; that like 
as He was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, 
even so we also should walk in newness of life." 

He comes to us in the Holy Supper. Every time we cele- 
brate the Lord's Supper, I would have you remember that 
the same King that rode into Jerusalem, comes to the daugh- 
ter of Zion here, and it is the same King that said then, "Go 
and bring the colt," that to-day says to you and to me, "This 
is My body; this is My blood." Did you ever stop to think 
that every time you go to the Lord's Supper, you receive the 
King that rocle into Jerusalem on a colt? A remarkable 
ride ! Oh, to think of it, that the Lord God, who made the 
heavens and the earth with His Word, should come down on 
one of these worlds ; and in this world, on the Holy Land ; and, 
in the Holy Land, on a little dumb animal, should ride into 
Jerusalem! The thought overwhelmes me, that a beast of 
burden should bear God, who plays with the worlds, and 
carry Him into Jerusalem! Eemarkable ride! 

II. Notice, in the second place, The colt that bore Him 
away. People might wonder why it is that Jesus Christ, the 
Son of God, should ride into Jerusalem upon a colt, un- 
broken, inseparable, young, and conquered. Why should 
Jesus Christ ride into Jerusalem on a colt, as Mark, and 
Luke, and John tell us, on which man never sat? Let us not 
forget that when God does great things, and holy things, He 
does them through objects that have never been burdened 
before. I call your attention to the fact (Numbers 19) that 
when the Lord God told Moses that he should offer a sacri- 
fice for "a water of separation" for the forgiveness of sins, 
He said Moses should take a heifer, red, without a spot, per- 
fect, no blemish, that never bore a yoke. That is God's way 
of doing things. The typical things of Christ and Him cruci- 
fied were not to have borne a yoke. I call your attention 
again to the 21st Chapter of Deuteronomy, where God laid 
down the law, when a man should have been found murdered, 
nnd they could not find the murderer, He said, take a heifer 
on which there never had been a yoke, and offer it as a sac- 



ADVENT SUNDAY. 23 

rifice. I call your attention again to 1 Samuel C :7, where we 
find that the Philistines are to bring the ark of God back to 
the children of Israel, with the special command that that 
ark of the covenant must be drawn by a new cart, and to that 
cart must be hitched, not old oxen, but two cows that never 
had the yoke on before. I call your attention to Zechariah 
9 : 9, where He said that the Lord Jesus Christ should ride in- € 
to Jerusalem upon a colt, the foal of an ass. And so we find 
in our lesson to-day that the King of kings, and Lord of 
lords, is riding upon a colt, unbroken, a type of perfection, 
not yet abused; a type of Him whose bones should not be 
broken. 

You w T ill notice again that while Mark, and Luke, and 
John speak only of the colt, Matthew and Zecharias tell us 
that the colt and its dam should be inseparable. Why was 
it that the Lord Jesus Christ did not say to His disciples: 
Go over there and you will find at Bethphage a colt and an 
ass tied; leave the ass tied and bring the colt only? Because 
the Lord Jesus Christ wanted the words of the prophecy ful- 
filled to the letter. The dam and colt are inseparable, They 
must bring both. They must lay their garments on the backs 
of both. They both must go into Jerusalem. Why? Be- 
cause the Church of the Old Testament and the Church of the 
New Testament are inseparable. We sometimes talk about 
the beginning of the Church of God on the day of Pentecost. 
Pray, tell me, my friends, where was the Church before the 
day of Pentecost? The Church of God that took its origin in 
the garden of Eden, when the first promise of a Savior was 
given, was the old Church, coming on down through the ages ; 
and now the time has come that the great King of Heaven Is 
going to give the old Church a new life, and the consequence 
is that the colt and the ass both must go into Jerusalem, be- 
cause the old Church, with its passover, the old Church, with 
its circumcision, in Jesus Christ inseparable, must pass over 
into the Lord's Supper and Holy Baptism. Not a moment in 
the history of the world that the Church of God has not ex- 
isted ; and that is the Church to which the Savior refers Avhen 
He says : "Thou art Peter and upon this Rock I will build 
My Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it." 



24 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

He rode not only a colt that was inseparable from its dam ; 
not only a colt that never was broken ; but He rode a colt that 
was young. "A young colt," says one of the disciples, "was 
brought to the Savior." That means something. There is a 
young Church to be baptized on the day of Pentecost. The 
Church began its missionary work as a missionary must do, by 
.converting the old people, and then saying to them, "Now 
bring your children," and as time passes on, the Church of 
God must realize that unless we take care of our little children 
and keep them in the house of God, the world can never be 
converted to Christ. Oh, that every church on earth would 
recognize the meaning of the King riding into Jerusalem on 
a colt. God wants these little infants, born in Christian fam- 
ilies, dedicated to Him in childhood, and kept there. God 
wants the young people in the Church to do something. 
There was a time when the Church of God depended almost 
wholly for work on priests and fathers, and a few mothers; 
but the time is coming when the old beast must be relieved, 
and the new colt must be ridden. 

Young people, listen to me this morning. When the King 
of Heaven rode into Jerusalem on a colt, and the mother 
followed, He meant to teach you and me that every child of 
the Church of God, from now on, shall work for the spreading 
of the Gospel over the world ; and I see a bright day coming 
for the Church of God. I rejoice that the time has come that 
young men and young women are not talking about father's 
Church, and mother's Church, but it is "our Church," and we 
will go where God says go, and we will say what God says 
say, and we will do what God says do. 

III. Let me call your attention finally to the Christians 
of that day. Remarkable was their obedience; their liber- 
ality; their enthusiasm and their ignorance. 

You will notice that the Lord Jesus Christ gave two of 
His disciples that morning rather a hard command. He said : 
"You go over to Bethphage and there you will find an ass and 
a colt tied ; loose them and bring them to Me, and if any man 
saith aught, just say unto him, the Lord has need of them." 
Human reason would have rebelled against such a command. 
Human reason would have said, "Do you suppose that I am 
going to go over there and be a thief, untie an animal with- 



ADVENT SUNDAY. 2;j 

out the right, and take it away? Thou hast asked a hard 
thing of us, O Lord." But notice that these two disciples who 
were likely Peter and John, never said a word. They went 
where Jesus told them to go. They said exactly what Jesus 
told them to say. They came back exactly as Jesus said they 
should come. Their obedience was remarkable, and, I shall 
ask a question now — let us examine ourselves. Do we, as the 
Christians on that day did, go, when Jesus says go? Do we 
say what Jesus says we shall say? Do we come to Him as 
Jesus said they should come to Him? Oh, that every Chris- 
tian on earth would this morning learn from the Christians 
of that day, to go, since God has said for two thousand years, 
Go into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature. 
Some of you have listened to your Savior calling, and calling, 
and calling, "Come unto Me, all ye that labor and are heavy 
ladened, and I will give you rest." He has called you all, 
and some of you are not coming. Kemarkable was the obed- 
ience that day! Oh, that it might be as remarkable this 
morning ! 

Not only was their obedience remarkable, but also their 
liberality. Notice the disciples on that day. When they lifted 
the Savior up on that colt they took off their own garments 
and laid them under Him for a saddle. This liberality be- 
comes contagious. The people are coming to Jerusalem to 
the great Passover ; they see what these two disciples did, and 
they take off their garments and lay them on the road ; some 
run to the palm trees and pluck off the limbs and throw 
them in the highway. In other words, they did all they could 
to give to the Lord Jesus Christ. What liberality! Think 
of it, in comparison with the liberality of to-day. Compare 
the song that morning with the song this morning all over 
the country. You will find in a great majority of the 
churches hired choirs, people paid to sing a song of praise to 
the King of Heaven. On that day they did not stand around 
the colt and say, "Oh King, if Thou wilt give me a dollar and 
a half I will sing for an hour." On that morning they did not 
stand around Him and say, "O God, Thou hast given me a 
tongue to sing and I can sing; but it is too good for Thee 9 
unless Thou dost pay me for it." If people have no other 
way of making their living but by singing, let them be paid 



26 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

for their song, but all over this world to-day we are having 
congregations with their mouths closed, and choirs that are 
making their living honestly in other ways, and there they 
stand and with closed mouths will not sing, unless it is to 
their own praise, at the rate of a dollar an hour. May God 
in Heaven have mercy upon them! I say, my friends, that 
the Christians of this day ought to sing as they never sang 
before, to the honor of our King, who comes through the Word 
of God and His Holy Sacraments, to make His home in our 
hearts. Compare the liberality of that day with this. They 
did not reach into their pockets and hunt a little mite, a little 
spare change, and hand it to the King of Heaven. They took 
the coats off of their backs and laid them down for the honor 
of their King. How many of us are willing to spare even a 
Christmas gift for the King of Heaven? It is our intention 
on this coming Christmas day to raise a small gift of six 
thousand dollars to cancel the debt of this Church, and to 
perform our obligation to the synod of which we are a mem- 
ber, to carry on the Lord's great work. What are we going 
to do? Are we going to sit back and say, "Let us see what 
the others do?" Are we going to see how little we can do, or 
are we going to welcome the King of Heaven by a sacrifice 
that means, I will do something if I have to sell the coat off 
my back? I do not say you need to do that ; we do not have to 
do that; but I say that the same King that rode into Jeru- 
salem and was welcomed by the Christians that day, is the 
same King that is, this morning, nearly two thousand years 
nearer the judgment than He was then, and we are better off 
financially than those people were. Oh, let us welcome the 
King this time with songs of praise, and with our pocketbooks. 
Then we can sing as we never sang before : "Hosanna to the 
Son of David! Blessed is He that cometh in the name of 
the Lord!" 

Kemarkable also was the enthusiasm of that day. It 
seems very strange that the Lord Jesus Christ who had been 
stoned or abused throughout the three years of His minis- 
try, all at once should receive such an enthusiastic welcome, 
on the side hill of Olivet. It seems remarkable, I say, that 
every voice, not only among the disciples, but among the 
people of Jerusalem, should be aroused on that day. That 



ADVENT SUNDAY. '27 

flame of fire seemed to have swept over the whole multitude, 
and to have penetrated the walls, until the people stood on 
the housetops, and children ran, and all sang: "Hosanna in 
the highest! Blessed is lie that cometh in the name of the 
Lord! Hosanna to the King!" Even the Pharisees stood 
back and said: "Who is this?" Even the Pharisees said: 
/'Down with the noise! Down with the enthusiasm!" Christ 
riding on the colt says: "If the people will not speak, the 
stones will." Some people say stones cannot speak. God 
Almighty can make rocks talk. The King was going into 
Jerusalem that day, and He had to be received with a great 
enthusiasm, and yet the human mind reasons and says : "How 
did this thing come about, any way?" It is very plain. Just 
a few days before, the Lord Jesus was over at Bethany, 
where He had spent the past night, and had found Mary and 
Martha mourning for their dead brother. He walked with 
them to the grave where Lazarus had been asleep for four 
days in the arms of death. Jesus looks heavenward to His 
Father, and then at the grave, and says: "Lazarus, come 
forth !" And to the surprise of the Jews who were with them, 
Lazarus arose, and that remarkable fact is carried to the 
city of Jerusalem. The Pharisees are worried, and they say : 
"The whole world is after Him." The chief priests are ex- 
cited, and they said : "There is only one thing to be done ; we 
have got to kill Lazarus!" The great festival of the Paschal 
Lamb is to be celebrated. The people are coming from all 
sources to Jerusalem. The conversation is on one subject, 
and the subject is that Jesus of Nazareth has raised Lazarus 
from the dead after he was in the grave four days. The one 
class of men said, "If He raised Lazarus, He will raise us ; and 
if He can raise the dead, He is the King of Heaven ; and if we 
get to see Him, we will worship Him," and all at once they see 
coming down over the hillside of Olivet the King of Heaven, 
the Lord of Heaven, the One that raised Lazarus from the 
dead ; the One that is going to come to you and me when we 
die; the One that is going to shake the graves through His 
fingers and hold us up before the judgment bar of God: 
and the fire of their souls was kindled, and they burst out : 
"Hosanna to the Son of David ! Blessed is He that cometh in 
the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest !" And they 



28 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

took off their coats, and the palms were strewn before Him. 
The King of Heaven is riding on a colt ! Remarkable ride ! 

And yet, my friends, remarkable as was the enthusiasm 
of that day, just as remarkable was the ignorance of the 
people. Like many a false revival, it was but a few days 
until those same people cried out : "Crucify Him ! Crucify 
Him!" There are revivals that are a God's blessing, and there 
are revivals that are not for good. Whenever you find a 
revival that is simply based upon human enthusiasm, and no 
proper instruction in God's Word, the result will always be 
evil. As I go over this city I am surprised to find the number 
of families that are not Christian, and possibly never will be, 
who claim to have been converted at one time by a certain 
Rev. Chapman. Rev. Chapman was called a good revivalist, 
so far as I know, and yet there was one mistake made at that 
revival, and that is, that the people were simply taken into 
church without the proper instruction, and the result is that, 
like these people at Jerusalem, to-day many are crying out : 
"Crucify Him! Crucify Him!" And so I say to you this 
morning, my friends, the remarkable ignorance of that day 
was this: That although Zechariah had so plainly written 
it in the 9th chapter and the 9th verse, that this very thing 
would take place, John tells us that even the disciples did 
not find that out until Christ was glorified. On that day 
there was not a Christian around Jesus on that colt who knew 
that the Old Testament said one word about it, and that was 
the remarkable ignorance, that led the people in a few days' 
time to cry out "Crucify Him! Crucify Him!" 

In conclusion, my dear friends, let us notice these few 
words : "And this was done * * *" — For what purpose? 
All this was done that it might be fulfilled which was spoken 
by the prophet, saying : "Tell ye the daughter of Zion, Be- 
hold thy King cometh unto thee, meek, and sitting upon an 
ass, and a colt the foal of an ass." All this was done that 
people might study God's Word. There is nothing that we 
need to-day so much as a thorough study of the Bible. If 
the children of Israel had studied the Book of Zechariah, 
they would not have made the mistake they did. They would 
not have rejected their King, and many of them lost their 
immortal souls. What we need to-day, above everything else. 



ADVENT SUNDAY. 29 

ie a Christian school in every Church where children can 
study the Bible at least as long as they do the arithmetic. 
There is not a family in the city of Mansfield to-day that 
would be satisfied to have their sons study arithmetic only 
thirty minutes every week; and yet we all seem to be per- 
fectly satisfied if our children come to Sunday-school once 
in a while and study this great Word of God, which is worth 
more than all the public schools together; and the Church 
of God is not prospering as it should prosper, just because 
of our ignorance of the Word of God. Why did Jesus ride 
into Jerusalem on a colt? In order that the Christian people 
of the land might educate their children better and study the 
Word of God, and not only learn the Word of God, but, fur- 
thermore, that they might remember it. It is not enough 
simply to read through the Bible and close the book and go 
on and not remember what is in the Book. I suppose many 
of those old Israelites had read the 9th chapter of Zechariah 
over, but they never knew what was in it. They were just 
like some people now T . They come to Church, — not because 
they want to come in to hear a sermon — not because they 
want to learn something — bat simply because it is a custom. 
If you want to do anything at all with the Word of God, learn 
it; and having heard it, impress it upon your minds, and 
keep that Word. You will need it some day. 

And not only remember it, but believe it. All this was 
done that the people might believe the Word of God. I meet 
with people every once in a while who are perf ctly willing to 
accept this thing, or that thing, in the Bible, but when some- 
thing comes before them which they cannot grasp with hu- 
man reason, they then do not want to accept it. I would like 
to ask if there is anything in the Word of God more un- 
reasonable than the fact that Jesus should be born of a 
virgin? Anything in the Bible more unreasonable than that 
He who plays with the sun, and moon, and stars, on the ends 
of His fingers, should be carried into Jerusalem on the back 
of a little animal? Is there anything more unreasonable than 
that? And yet, Jesus was born of a virgin. Jesus Christ, 
the King of Heaven, did ride into Jerusalem on a colt, and 
that He did to teach you that when you come here to the 
Lord's Supper the next time, and the pastor says : "Take eat. 



30 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

this is the body and the blood of your Lord and Savior, Jesus 
Christ," and your stubborn mind says, "I do not believe 
that because I cannot understand it," then, I say, in the 
name of God, believe Him, or go away until you are ready to 
believe Him. If you cannot believe God, your Lord and Sav- 
ior, in His Supper, how can you believe He rode into Jeru- 
salem on a colt? How can we comprehend God? And that 
is just where they made the mistake in the days of old, and 
that is where some people are mistaken to-day. He wants 
you to believe what He says — not comprehend Him. He 
wants us to believe His Word. 

And not only to believe it, but to live it. — To live what 
He says. Oh, my friends, if one or two words of God on that 
day — memorable day ! — could move a whole people to love 
and praise Him as they never did before, how much more 
should you, who are fed on the Word of God, Sunday after 
Sunday, and have the Bible in your homes, — how much 
more should you, beginning this morning, if you never have 
before, say : "Lord God, what is it that I shall do? Help me 
to do it, and I will." Live the Word of God! If every mem- 
ber of the First Lutheran Church would, by the help of God, 
live as he has been taught, there would be a power here that 
would sway the whole city. I ask you this morning, then, 
in memory of this remarkable ride, to learn God's Word; 
remember it ; believe it, and live it ; and then the time will 
come that we shall see Jesus again, not riding on a colt, not 
riding in humility into the city of Jerusalem. The next time 
we see Him we shall look up into the New Jerusalem, as 
John looked up : 

"And I saw Heaven opened, and Behold a white horse, 
and He that sat upon him was called Faithful and True, and 
in righteousness Lie doth judge and make war. His eyes were 
as a flame of fire and on His head were many crowns, and He 
had a name written that no man knew but He Himself. And 
He was clothed with a vesture dipped in blood, and His name 
is called the Word of God. And the armies which were in 
Heaven followed Him upon white horses, clothed in fine linen, 
white and clean. And out of His mouth goeth a sharp 
sword, that with it He shall smite the nations, and He shall 
rule them with a rod of iron, and He treadeth the winepress 



ADVENT SUNDAY. 31 

of the fierceness and wrath of the Almighty God. He hath 
on His vesture and on His thigh a name written: King of 
Kings and Lord of Lords." Amen. 

PRAYER. 

O God, the Father, who hast given Thine only begotten Son to come 
unto us and be our King, to conquer death and hell ; O Thou Christ, who 
didst ride into Jerusalem upon a colt, and who didst lay down Thy life a few 
days afterwards, and didst again conquer death; O Thou Holy Spirit, pro- 
ceeding from the Father and the Son, who dost call, and gather, enlighten, 
sanctify and keep us : O Triune God, before whom angels bow, to Thee we 
look this morning with thankful hearts, for the preservation of oar lives, 
for the privilege of hearing Thy glorious Word. Strengthen us for the 
battle of life and give us a strong faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, as our only 
Savior ; and help us to be thankful unto Him, until we shall see"Him on the 
white horse, as King of kings and Lord of lords. Amen. 



SECOND SUNDAY IN ADVENT. 



CHRISTMAS IS COMING, AND SO IS CHRIST. 



Lukb 21: 25-36. 



HND there shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars; - 
and upon the earth distress of nations, with perplexity ; the sea and 
the waves roaring ; men's hearts failing them for fear, and for looking 
after those things which are coming on earth; for the powers of heaven 
shall be shaken. And then shall they see the Son of man coming in a cloud 
with power and great glory. And when these things begin to come to pass, 
then look up and lift up « your heads; for your redemption draweth nigh. 
And he spake to them a parable : Behold the fig tree, and all the trees ; 
when they now shoot forth ye see and know of your own selves that summer 
is now nigh at hand . So likewise ye, when ye see these things come to pass, 
know ye that the kingdom of God is nigh at hand. Verily I say unto you, 
This generation shall not pass away, till all be fulfilled. Heaven and earth 
shall pass away ; but my words shall not pass away. 

And take heed to yourselves lest at any time your hearts be overcharged 
with surfeiting, and drunkenness, and cares of this life, and so that day 
come upon you unawares. For as a snare shall it come on all them that dwell 
on the face of the whole earth. Watch ye therefore, and pray always, that 
ye may be accounted worthy to escape all these things that shall come to 
pass, and to stand before the Son of man. 

Sanctify us, Lord, through Thy truth; 
Thy Word is truth. Amen 



Dearly Beloved : — 

We are assured in our gospel lesson for this morning 
that heaven and earth shall pass away, but God's Word shall 
not pass away. For four thousand long years the Word of 
God had promised a Savior. Many people thought the first 
Christmas would never come, — but it came. God's Word 
shall never pass away. Nearly two thousand years have 
passed since Christ promised us that He was coming again. 
Christmas is coming, and the whole world to-day recognizes 
the fact that Christmas has come and will come, until Christ 

32 



SECOND SUNDAY IN ADVENT. 33 

shall come again. Just as surely as the first Christmas came 
because God promised it, just so surely the Son of man is 
coming in glory, and the powers of heaven shall be shaken. 
Without any further introductory words, let me call your 
attention this morning to the fact that 

CHRISTMAS IS COMING, AND SO IS CHRIST. 

I. This leads me first of all to observe that now is the 
time to be saved. We are told to lift up our heads, for our 
redemption draweth nigh. We are told that when Christ 
comes again He is coming to judge, not to save. Surely 
then, my friends, now is the time to be saved. Christ came 
to save in the first place. All history, the whole life of 
Jesus Christ, swings around the cross on Calvary. All 
creation tells the story that Christ came to save. Before 
the foundation of the world was laid, w r e were called in 
Christ. Four thousand years Jesus Christ was promised 
before He came. When He came He told us what His message 
was. The Son of man is come to seek and to save that 
which is lost. I know that the Lord Jesus Christ healed 
the sick; that He gave hearing to the deaf, sight to the 
blind and life to the dead. But that was not the main rea- 
son why He came to this world. He performed His miracles 
to convince the people that He was the Son of God, who 
came here for no other purpose than to be a Shepherd, and 
lay down His life for His sheep, and on Calvary's hill He 
did lay it down, and laid it down for the purpose of being 
a Lord and Savior for the salvation of the souls of the world. 
That is why Christmas is held so deeply in the hearts of all 
Christians and all nations. Even the people who make no 
profession, feel in this season of the year that there is some- 
thing grand coming; there is something noble near us. 
The window of the Jew as well as the window of the Chris- 
tian tells the story of the Christmas gift. The homes of all 
of our people are filled with a Christmas joy. There is a 
song in the hearts of all people : Joy to the world, the Lord 
has come! 

And, my dear Christian friends, the same Christ who 
came to save is yet coming to save. He is still coming 



34 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

through His Word and the Holy Sacraments. Why are we 
assembling here Sunday after Sunday and sitting down for 
an hour? Simply to hear a human address? No. We are 
coming together because we realize that the Word of God is 
a word of life; because we recognize that it is the word of 
the great Savior, who says : Lo, I am with you alway, even 
unto the end of the world ! — who says : Where two or three 
are gathered together in My name, I am in the midst of them ; 
who says : He that is of God heareth God's words ; ye there- 
fore hear them not, because ye are not of God. Not forsak- 
ing the assembling of themselves together as the manner of 
some is ; — saying unto us : Remember the Sabbath day to 
keep it holy. Oh, it is the same Lord Jesus Christ, who 
took that remarkable ride into Jerusalem, and the same Lord 
Jesus Christ that comes to us this morning, and comes to us 
through His means of grace, who is ever present with us ; and 
this same Lord Jesus who came, and comes, ivill come again. 
He told us so Himself. In the 14th chapter of John, Christ 
says : In my Father's house are many mansions ; if it were 
not so I would have told you; I go to prepare a place for 
you, and I will come again that I may receive you unto my- 
self, that ye may be where I am also. The last chapter of 
the Bible, and almost the last verse, over a half a century 
after Christ had ascended, He cried down from the heavens 
once more : "Surely I come quickly." 

We have not only the testimony of Jesus that He is com- 
ing again, but we have the testimony of all the apostles. 
When Peter and John walked up to the temple, past the 
gate Beautiful, and found the man who had been a cripple 
from his infancy ; when that poor cripple held out his hand, 
expecting to receive something of them, Peter said : "Silver 
and gold have I none; but such as I have, give I thee. In 
the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk." 
And when that man arose he began to leap for joy, and the 
people wondered what had taken place. Peter said : Do not 
give the credit to me; do not give the credit to John; he 
was raised up by that Christ who was received up into 
heaven to be retained there until the restitution of all 
things. 



SECOND SUNDAY IN ADVENT. 35 

He is coming again. We are told in the epistle to the 
Hebrews that that same Christ, who was offered for our 
sins, is coming again, without sin, unto salvation. When 
the Lord Jesus Christ said to John, on the Isle of Patmos: 
"Surely, I come quickly," the last prayer of the oldest 
apostle was: "Even so, come Lord Jesus." Christ is com- 
ing again, my friends, — not to save, but to judge. 

Therefore, it becomes the duty of the people now to be 
saved. Now is the day of salvation. What good does 
Christmas do, if you will not accept the Savior? What good 
does Christmas do, if you are living like a child of the devil 
in a Christian land and do not accept the Lord and Savior, 
Jesus Christ? I say, therefore, to every one in this house 
this morning, in the language of the apostle Peter : "Repent 
and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ 
for the remission of sins." 

II. We learn again from the fact that Christmas is com- 
ing, and Christ is also coming, that He may come even 
before Christmas. "And He spake to them a parable : Be- 
hold the fig tree, and all the trees; when they now shoot 
forth ye see and know of your own selves that summer is now 
nigh at hand. So likewise ye, when ye see these things come 
to pass, know ye that the kingdom of God is nigh at hand." 
Why do we celebrate the second coming of Christ before 
Christmas? Why did the Church of God select this text for 
to-day? Because it recognized the fact that Jesus may come 
before Christmas. When we look at the fig tree we can tell 
without going to the almanac, whether it is winter or sum- 
mer. Suppose that you and I should fall asleep to-day for 
a long period of time, and suddenly wake up and go out into 
the garden or into the fields and there behold the peach trees 
in bloom, and the cherry trees in bloom, and the leaves of 
the forest coming out, we might not know what month of 
the year it is, exactly; we might not know just to the day, 
which day of the month it was, but no man would be so 
stupid in this region as not to know that it was not Christ- 
mas ; no man would be so stupid as not to know that we were 
somewhere in the springtime, and summer was coming. 

The same Lord Jesus Christ who is coming again has 
given us certain marks and signs by which we may know 



36 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

when He is coming, and we do know from the signs that 
have come and from all the marks that He has given us, that 
He may come now any time. He may come this December 
yet. We have many signs given us. You remember that 
these lessons concerning His second coming are all based 
upon what took place in Jerusalem. As we heard in this 
morning's lesson, in Matthew, the disciples called Jesus out 
to look at that great temple. Jesus looking at that temple 
did not forget what is going to happen to Jerusalem, what 
is going to happen in the end of the world, and He said to 
them : "Not one stone of this temple shall remain on top of 
the other." The disciples not for a single moment believ- 
ing that that temple would fall down as long as the world 
stands, put a double question to the Savior: "What shall 
be the sign of Thy coming, and of the end of the world?" 
Jesus had, first of all, in mind the destruction of Jerusalem, 
and then the destruction of Jerusalem as a type of the de- 
struction of the great city of the world. Just as Rome has 
in itself the history of the world, just so the city of Jerusa- 
lem is a type of the destruction of the whole world. There- 
fore, the Lord Jesus Christ tells them that this city of Jeru- 
salem shall be destroyed, and after a while He will come 
when the gospel has been preached to the ends of the world. 

My friends, has Jerusalem been destroyed? Go back into 
history. Thirty seven years after that year when He told 
them that not one stone should remain on top of another, 
we find the Roman army around the city of Jerusalem; we 
find that wall being torn down, stone after stone; we find, 
as Josephus tells us, that the plow turns the furrow where 
that wall stood. 

Now, my friends, there is a sign that the same Lord who 
said that those stones should not remain on top of each 
other, is the same one who said He is coming again. 

Not only is it true that Jerusalem has been destroyed, 
but it is also true that we have many signs that He is coming 
again. Our text holds up to us signs, celestial, terrestrial, 
national and individual. 

"And there shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, 
and in the stars, and upon the earth, distress of nations, 
with perplexity ; the sea and the waves roaring." 



SECOND SUNDAY IN ADVENT. 37 

What these signs in the sun, and the moon, and stars, 
are, Matthew tells us more minutely : 

"Immediately after the tribulation of those days shall 
the sun be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, 
and the stars shall fall from heaven, and the powers of the 
heavens shall be shaken." 

1. The question arises : Have we had these signs in the 
sun, and in the moon, and in the stars? Have you forgot- 
ten that when Jesus Christ was crucified the sun was dark 
for three long hours, at a time when an eclipse would have 
been impossible? Are you not aware of the fact that the 
Passover was celebrated during the full moon, and that the 
full moon forbids the possibility of an eclipse of the sun? 
Science is not able to answer to-day yet what caused the 
darkness during the crucifixion of the Lord Jesus Christ. 
So, we behold, the sun was darkened the very day that the 
Lord died, — the same Lord who said He is coming. 

If we come down in history, have you forgotten the 19th 
of May, 1780? Have you never read about that dark day 
in America? Again the moon was full; again there was 
no possible chance for an eclipse of the sun; again the sun 
grew like a red spot in the heavens at nine o'clock in the 
morning, when the fowls went on their roosts, and the peo- 
ple gathered in their homes, and lit their candles, and the 
colored people of the South fell down on their plantations 
and cried out : "The world is coming to an end!" The dark 
day of America stands before us as one of the signs that 
Christ is coming. 

We are told that this sign is not only to be in the sun, 
but in the moon. That same night, though there was not a 
cloud in the skies, was the darkest night in the history of 
the world; as dark as the darkness of Egypt, when it was 
felt. Science has never been able to answer why; but his- 
tory tells us that the mark was there. 

And how about the stars, — have they fallen? Some one 
may say "That is impossible. The stars are as large as or 
larger than the earth and they shall not fall/' and yet, my 
friends, it is true that on the 14th day of November, 1833, 
from the middle of the Atlantic ocean to San Francisco; 
from the far North to the northern part of South America, 



38 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

people everywhere looked out of the windows, some saying, 
"The stars are falling" ; others saying, "The end of the earth 
is coining"; and the colored people of the South crying out 
again : "The world is coming to an end, and it is burning." 
The stars did fall, and not only did they fall on the 13th of 
November, 1833, but they have fallen many times since 
Christ uttered these words ; and I call your attention to the 
fact that they fell only a few times before the Reformation, 
and fourteen times since the Reformation, and ten times 
during the last century. I say we must be ignorant of his- 
tory if we do not understand that the Lord is coming, and 
may come before Christmas, because the celestial signs have 
been given. 

"Well," some one says, "Will we not have greater signs 
than these?" We may have. Another may say: "Are not 
some of these things scientifically known?" They are 
known, but even if they are, what is the difference. The 
Lord God, the time of the flood, said: "I will set my bow 
in the heavens as a sign that there shall be no universal 
flood again." There is not a man on earth to-day who does 
not believe that God is going to keep that covenant. Never- 
theless, you do not find in the Word of God that there was 
no bow before the flood; but God took the bow that told 
the people it was raining, took that very bow and said, "You 
have seen it before, but now I set it as a sign" ; and it makes 
no difference if there have been dark suns and dark moons 
and falling stars all through the past, God has put that up 
there as a sign for you and for me to know that the end 
of the world is coming. 

2. We have not only celestial signs, but terrestrial 
signs. "The sea and the waves roaring, and upon the earth 
distress of nations, with perplexity." 

"The sea and the waves roaring." What makes the sea 
roar? What causes all these disturbances? Earthquakes 
in the earth and storms and commotions above? Have you 
forgotten, my friends, that this earth has been quaking and 
shaking many a time since Christ uttered these words? Have 
you ever read about the great earthquake on the first day of 
November, 1755, at Lisbon? Have you forgotten about that 
earthquake that was felt all over America, that was felt all 



SECOND SUNDAY IN ADVENT. 39 

over Africa, that was felt all over Asia, that was felt all 
over Europe? Have you forgotten that earthquake when 
ninety thousand people went down to destruction in less 
than two minutes? Have you forgotten how the waters re- 
ceded and left the ground dry, and came back fifty feet higher 
than usual, and swept over Portugal? That is only one 
great earthquake. China has been shaken from center to 
circumference; South America is being shaken all the time, 
and if you have ever crossed with me over the Kocky Mount- 
ains, you remember seeing the broken masonry and the marks 
of earthquakes that ran for miles and miles; if you have 
ever stood within the National Park of the United States 
and watched those geysers hurling hot water 250 feet in the 
air, with a thundering and a roaring ; if you have ever looked 
into that burning lake, where, boiling like immense apple- 
butter kettles, you see the lake of fire, you will understand 
that the earth, like an old man, begins to tremble and go 
into convulsions; that the earth some of these days with a 
mighty noise, is going to shake, and shake, and shake, until 
the stars shall fall and the sea shall roar as it never roared 
before ; and all these things are signs that Christ is coming. 

3. We have not only terrestrial signs, but we have 
national signs. "And upon the earth distress of nations, 
with perplexity." 

Matthew tells us a little more about these things : "And 
ye shall hear of wars and rumors of wars; see that ye be 
not troubled, for all these things must come to pass, but the 
end is not yet. For nation shall rise against nation, and 
kingdom against kingdom; and there shall be famines and 
pestilences, and earthquakes in divers places. All these are 
the beginning of sorrows." 

National signs. We boast a great deal of our govern- 
ment, and we have a government, though one of the best on 
earth, that does not know yet what to do with the trusts; 
we have a government that does not know yet how to put 
a poor man into Congress ; we have a government that does 
not yet know what to do with Eussia, or how to help the 
Boers, or how to help some nations in distress in the old 
land. No one well versed in history can help seeing that 
every nation on earth is perplexed. There are wars and 



40 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

rumors of wars; pestilence is sweeping over nation after 
nation; one problem after another is presented, and every 
man has a theory and no man has found a solution. The 
war between capital and labor; the jealousy of nation 
against nation; the preparations of the great navies of the 
earth, the cutting of Panama, changing the face of the world 
by five thousand miles, bringing the Western nations to the 
East, not by going East, but West, the last great battle of 
the world to be fought by a Christian 'nation on the one hand 
and the oriental country on the other; all these problems 
are before us, and the nations must acknowledge, we do not 
know what is coming next ; we are perplexed, and God says 
all the time, "The very fact that you do not know what to 
do next, is a sign, — a sign that I may come before Christ- 
mas. 

4. We have not ony national signs, but we have also 
individual signs. "And take heed to yourselves lest at any 
time your hearts be overcharged with surfeiting, and drunk- 
enness, and cares of this life, and so that day come upon 
you unawares." 

Overcharged. Who cannot see, my friends, that we are 
living in a day when people are overcharged? Not one of 
us has time to sit down with our families any more, as we 
ought; not one of us sits down and rests and enjoys the life 
that God has given us; the nations of the earth are rushing 
to and fro, dissatisfied, as they never have been before. The 
pulse feels there is something coming, even as the people in 
Egypt, when Christ was dying, felt that some god must be 
dying. So the nations of the earth, overcharged, want some 
kind of comfort. What do they do? "Well," they say, "Let 
us have a feast; let us not be satisfied with one or two or 
three courses, but let us have five or six, and let us eat for 
hours, and let us be — regular swine. Overcharged with 
surfeiting. Did you ever notice more feasting and more ban- 
queting than we are having to-day? All over the country, 
wherever we meet, let us eat a breakfast, and a lunch, and 
a dinner at home, and then go out and carouse until mid- 
night, and eat again, like swine; men tumbling over at the 
end of their tables, dead ; the press telling us they had heart 
failure. Swine-failure is what it is. Eating like swine, try- 



SECOND SUNDAY IN ADVENT. 4L 

ing to find comfort in their stomachs instead of in God's 
Word — a sign that Christ may come before Christmas ! 

Others, who would not be guilty of surfeiting, are guilty 
of going to the saloon, and drinking, and drinking, and drink- 
ing, no difference whether the children have any bread to eat, 
no difference whether they have any clothing to wear, no 
difference whether there is any coal to burn, no difference 
whether the wife and children are freezing to death or not, 
but simply to satisfy their own thirst; they go down into 
these hell holes which are found in every city, and they 
would not be found there, if people did not want them there; 
they would not be found there, if they were not patronized 
by the people who are so thirsty ; and I am ready to say they 
would not be found there, if the Christian people of our 
land did not want them there, — the so-called Christians. 
We have too many red-nosed Christians in our churches; 
too many people who are spending their money and losing 
their souls, and simply helping to carry out the sign that 
Christ may come before Christmas. 

"Overcharged with surfeiting, and drunkenness and 
cares of this life." Borne would not be guilty of sitting at 
a banquet because they are entirely too stingy to help pay 
for it; some would not drink because they are too stingy to 
buy it, but they are overcharged with the questions : What 
shall we eat? and what shall we wear? and how shall we keep 
the farms we have, and still add another to them? How 
shall we increase our business? How shall we increase our 
pleasures? How shall we occupy the best houses on the best 
street of the best city? They are overcharged with the de- 
sire to become rich. How many young men to-day are will- 
ing to go to work for so much a month, honestly earn their 
dollars, and save them, and live as our fathers did? How 
many young people have we to-day who are perfectly satis- 
fied to carry out the good Christian rule : "Work, save, 
pray?" How many people have we in the present day who 
are perfectly willing to lose a thousand dollars rather than 
tell a lie? Oh, the whole desire to-day is money, money, 
money. Gold is our god, and, my friends, these things are 
all signs individual, that Christ is coming, and may come 
before Christmas.. 



42 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

And there is still another individual sign. Christ came 
to His own and they received Him not. AVhen Christ was 
crucified the Jews said : "His blood be on us and our chil- 
dren." Like Cain with his mark, the Jew has wandered up 
and down over all the earth. He cannot lose his mark. We 
know him wherever we see him. The children of foreigners 
all become a new race here except the Jew. He cannot, as 
a rule, "pass away." Jesus holds this race up as a sign of 
His coming again. The Jews condemned Him. They saw 
Him crucified and they will see Him when He comes in 
glory with all His holy angels with Him. "Yerily I say unto 
you, this generation shall not pass away, till all he fulfilled/' 
No difference which side of the globe beholds Jesus first, the 
Jew will be there to see Him. 

III. What kind of icelcome loill He receive, when He 
comes? 

1. I answer that all nature will receive Him. It is a 
remarkable fact that the Lord God, in all His great acts, 
was always accompanied by nature itself. When He deliv- 
ered the law on Mount Sinai and gave it to Moses, the elec- 
tricity in the skies began to flash and the thunder began to 
roar. Why? Because God was doing something great. 

W 7 hen the Lord Jesus Christ came the first time to earth, 
remembering that Daniel had preached in the East long 
before that a star of Jacob is coming, wise men were looking 
for a star, and when they saw the star moving westward, 
they followed it to Jerusalem ; they followed it to Bethlehem ; 
they found the Savior ; — a star came with Him. 

When the Lord Jesus Christ was crucified on Calvary, 
we are told that the sun refused to shine ; we are told that 
the graves opened their mouths and gave forth their dead; 
we are told that the old earth that held the cross began to 
shake and tremble — Christ came. 

We are told in this morning's lesson that there will be 
all kinds of noise. "He shall come and the powers of heaven 
shall be shaken." When Christ comes again He will not 
ride, as He did into Jerusalem, on the colt of an ass. The 
clouds will become His steed; the trumpets of the angels 
will accompany Him; the stars will sing; the earth will 
shake, and the heavens will roll back, as Isaiah and John 



SECOND SUNDAY IN ADVENT. 43 

say, like a scroll. All nature will say : The King is com- 
ing! The King is Coming! — and He may come before 
Christmas. 

2. Not only will all nature receive Him, but even the 
lost men will receive Him. "Men's hearts failing them for 
fear, and for looking after those things which are coming 
on the earth; for the powers of heaven shall be shaken." 

"Men's hearts failing them." What kind of men? Lost 
men. What will the lost men do on that day when He comes? 
We are told in the 6th chapter of Kevelations what they will 
do. They will begin to cry out to the mountains, and to the 
hills, and unto the rocks: "Cover us; cover us." They 
want to get away from the coming King; and God tells us 
that the mountains will never get a chance to cover them; 
the hills will not fall on them ; their hearts will fail, — stop 
beating — at once. It is enough to make the heart stop 
beating, when men have had God knocking at their hearts 
all their lives to come in, and they have said "Stay out"; 
now He comes, and the hearts stop beating. God is coming. 
That is the condition when Jesus Christ comes to the lost. 
Then God will lift them up, and every knee shall bow be- 
fore Him, of things in heaven and things on the earth and 
things under the earth. Those hearts cannot stop beating 
forever. God will say: "Hearts, wake up again. Stand 
bef6re Me. I am thy God!" Yes, my friends, they will all 
meet Christ on that day. 

3. And not only the lost, but the saved will receive 
Him; and receive Him how? By watching. Keceive Him 
joyfully; receive Him prayerfully. "Watch ye therefore, 
and pray always, that ye may be accounted worthy to escape 
all these things that shall come to pass, and to stand before 
the Son of man. And when these things begin to come to 
pass, then look up, and lift up your heads, for your redemp- 
tion draweth nigh." 

Watch. Look up. That is the way Christians shall re- 
ceive the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, — by watching and 
looking up. More than once in God's Word we are warned 
to watch and pray. The Lord never told us what day He is 
coming. He even acknowledged, in His state of humiliation 
that the Son of man does not know when He is coming; as 



44 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

Son of God, of course, He knew. It was never intended that 
you and I should know the day and the week of Christ's com- 
ing, but just as we know by the budding of the trees that 
spring is coming, just so we are to know that ail the signs 
are here, and that He may come any day; therefore watch. 
I would ask you all this morning to keep your eyes open 
for the coming Lord; be ready every day for the approach- 
ing of the Son of God with all His holy angels, and when 
you do receive Him, receive Him with your eyes open, look- 
ing up. Yes, lift up your heads. Receive Him joyfully. 

Some may say, "I do not like the text of the morning; 
it makes me fear and tremble.' 7 It would not if you were a 
Christian. That is just exactly why we want this text this 
morning. I know of no more joyful text in the Word of 
God, than the second coming of Christ. The very fact that 
some people are not ready for His coming is an evidence 
that there is something w T rong with them ; that they are not 
prepared yet. Why should we sing and pray every day: 
"Thy kingdom come" and then not love to see Him come? 
Is our prayer a mockery? Advent means Christ is coming. 
The Church of God has wisely selected this text for the sec- 
ond Sunday in Advent, because if Christ should come before 
Christmas, then that will be a greater day than Christmas, 
and we ought to rejoice. Lift up your heads for joy, and 
look for His coming. I have a message to declare to you 
to-day, as true as any message that I have ever delivered, 
and that is, if I had my choice, you would never go home 
again; if I had my choice you would never get out of this 
house until Christ came; I would love to offer the prayer 
this morning that John offered: "Even so, come thou 
quickly." Why? Because it is the greatest day in the his- 
tory of the world; a most happy and joyful day, when all 
the misery of the past for Christians is gone; when all 
things wrong in the past are made right; when all the peo- 
ple who have been slandered and abused shall have the cor- 
rection made by the Lord God, who knows. 

Oh, happy day; happy day; 
Come this way ; come this way. 



SECOND SUNDAY IN ADVENT. 15 

Receive Him prayerfully. "Watch ye, therefore, and 
pray always, that ye may be accounted worthy to stand 
before the Son of man." 

Yes, lift up your heads this morning, and with joyful 
hearts let us begin to pray, and mean it, "Thy kingdom 
come." When the great missionary went to Japan to preach 
the Gospel there, the greatest question was : How shall we 
conquer this heathen nation? This missionary got down on 
his knees and said: "If Japan is ever to be conquered for 
Christ, we have got to march in on our knees." And I say 
this morning, if you ever want to receive Christ as you 
should receive Him, then let your daily prayer be: "Thy 
kingdom come," and go on through life, on your knees. 
Amen. 

PRAYER. 

Our Heavenly Father, we thank Thee that Thou hast seen fit in Thy 
great wisdom to open before our eyes two great books : The book of nature, 
and the Book of Thy Word ; and that in both of these books we can read 
that the Author is the same, and that the mind of God is for the good ot 
all humanity and for His glory. We thank Thee for the second coming of 
Christ. We pray Thee, O God, that Thou wilt not let the Christmas that 
is coming rob our minds of the great truth that Jesus is coming again. We 
pray Thee that Thou wilt help us this day to be joyful in heart; to be pre- 
pared to meet Him. We ask Thee that Thou wilt give to each one in this 
house a strong faith in the true and living God. Help us to trust alone 
in Jesus Christ ; to come to Thee, O Father, and to trust alone in the Holy 
Spirit through the Savior, to lead us to Thee. We ask Thee that Thou wilt 
be with the sick, and the well. Bless those that are Thy children, and keep 
them Thine. And may Thy living truth this day thunder out from every 
pulpit until the souls of men shall become the souls of their God. These 
favors we ask in the name of Jesus, who taught us to pray : 

"Our Father who art in heaven, Hallowed be Thy name. Thy kingdom 
come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven. Give us this day our 
daily- bread. And forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass 
against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil : For 
Thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever and ever. Amen." 



THIRD SUNDAY IN ADVENT. 



OUR CHRISTMAS CATECHISM, 



Matt. 11: 2-11. 



%T OW when John had heard in the prison the works of Christ, he sent 
1 ^1 two of his disciples, and said unto him, Art thou he that should come, 
/ or do we look for another? Jesus answered and said unto them, 

Go and show John again those things which ye do hear and see : The blind 
receive their sight, and the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf 
hear, the dead are raised up, and the poor have the gospel preached to them. 
And blessed is he whosoever shall not be offended in me. And as they de- 
parted Jesus began to say unto the multitude concerning John, What went 
ye out into the wilderness to see? A reed shaken with the wind? But what 
went ye out for to see ? A man clothed in soft raiment ? behold, they that 
wear soft clothing are in kings' houses. But what went ye out for to see? 
A prophet? yea, I say unto you, and more than a prophet. For this is he, 
of whom it is written, Behold I send my messenger before thy face, which 
shall prepare thy way before thee. Verily I say unto you, Among them that 
are born of women there hath not risen a greater than John the Baptist : 
notwithstanding he that is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he. 



Dearly Beloved : — 

Two children in the same family, — one quiet, never mak- 
ing any noise, never asking any questions, called the good 
boy ; — another romping about, kicking over the chairs, put- 
ting everything out of place, asking one question after 
the other, called the bad boy. Time passes on and the boys 
become men, and the men become aged, and the quiet boy in 
the home is still quiet, and the world can get along without 
him ; but the little boy, full of life, asking one question after 
the other when he was a child, is now answering questions; 
he knows something. 

We find, my dear friends, that we are living in that season 
of the year when the world is full of questions. Our text for 
the morning is a question text, with a beautiful answer. A 
question concerning the Bible and an answer from the Bible, 
is a catechism, and I call your attention this morning to 

46 



THIRD SUNDAY IN ADVENT. 47 

OUR CHRISTMAS CATECHISM. 

There are three important questions in this catechism, 
and may the Holy Spirit help us to answer them correctly: 

I. Who was the greatest Man that was ever born in 
this world?. 

II. Who was the next greatest man that tvas ever bom 
in this world? 

III. Who may become greater than the next greatest 
man that ever lived? 

I. 

Who was the greatest Man that was ever born? 

Answer: The God-man. 

His person was the greatest. He was not only the greatest 
in person ; He was the greatest as a physician ; He was the 
greatest as a preacher. A message was sent by John the 
Baptist to this God-man: Art thou He that should come, 
or do we look for another? The answer, after the discipies 
had seen and heard, proved to John that He was the God-man. 

1. As to His person, there never was one like Him. 
Jesus of Nazareth, needed, promised, came, and no other 
Savior ever shall come. He was needed. This poor, lost con- 
demned world, with immortal souls, needed a Savior. The 
world always needed Him. Why would the heathen ever 
sacrifice, if they did not feel that something must be 
sacrificed for their sins? Why has the whole world been wor- 
shiping some kind of god, if it were not that they felt that 
we must have a savior? There was no question in John's 
mind about the fact that a savior was promised. He did not 
send a message, asking, Shall one come? He took it for 
granted that a savior must come, but, Art thou He that should 
come, or shall we look for another? The Savior is promised 
and He has come. Jesus of Nazareth was the Son of God 
and the Son of man. Luther in the explanation of the second 
article says : "I believe that Jesus Christ, true God, begot- 
ten of the Father from eternity, and also true man, born of 
the virgin Mary, is my Lord." So confesses every Lutheran ; 
so confesses every Christian. I do not care who he may be, 
the one who denies that Jesus Christ is Son of God and 



48 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

Son of Man, has not got Him for a Savior. This Savior never 
shall come again in humility. The Jews are still looking for 
the Messiah. Suppose this coming Christmas another child 
should be born in Bethlehem, with all the seeming qualities 
of this little Son of God that was born nearly two thousand 
years ago ; suppose all the Jews should go back to Jerusalem 
and say: "This is the Messiah. We, too, have seen his star 
come from the East. We, too, have heard the angels singing 
'Glory to God in the highest; on earth peace, good will to 
men!' " how would the Jews know that the child born this 
Christmas is the Son of David? Have you forgotten that 
only a short time after the Lord Jesus Christ ascended to 
heaven, the Eoman soldiers gathered around Jerusalem and 
tore down the walls, burned the temple and destroyed the 
only record on God's earth that shows that Jesus was the Son 
of David? It would be impossible in the present day to show 
that any child came from the seed of David. God's Provi- 
dence was wise when the temple was burned, to say: Now 
the record shall be destroyed because the greatest One who 
ever lived is born. 

2. Not only is this true concerning His person, but it is 
also true concerning Him as a Physician. When these two 
disciples went over to see Jesus, they found Him very busy. 
Luke tells us that at the very time the disciples arrived, He 
was performing some wonderful miracles. What were they? 
Eg was expelling death. Let us try to imagine that we are 
present with those two disciples while Jesus is expelling 
death. First of all, there stands a blind man ; one who was 
never able to see, and this greatest Man that ever lived, the 
God-man walks up to him and touches his eyes and says, "Be 
open," and the man looks, and beholds the multitudes, and he 
beholds nature for the first time, and begins to praise God ; 
and the two disciples of John say : "Did you ever see any- 
thing like this?" 

There comes a lame man carried by others, for he cannot 
walk ; his feet are dead. The Lord Jesus Christ, the greatest 
man that ever lived, looks at him and says: "Stand up," 
and the man who never walked before stands up and leaps 
for joy, and the disciples say: "Did you ever see anything 
like' this?" 



THIRD SUNDAY IN ADVENT. 49 

There comes a band of men in the distance, and they cry 
at the top of their voices: "Unclean! Unclean!" Jesus 
Christ is interested in them; the disciples of John cannot say 
a word to Him; He walks over to them, for the law does 
not allow them to come to Him, and looks at the lepers. He 
says to them : "Be clean," and the decayed flesh is restored 
to the flesh of youth, and the men who were living dead 
people, are now living living people ; and the disciples, who 
knew that leprosy was an incurable disease, said : "Did you 
ever see anything like this?" 

But that is not the end of it. There comes a long proces- 
sion of people. Lo, and behold, there comes a mother walk- 
ing behind the bier, weeping, wringing her hands in agony, 
and the Lord Jesus Christ, the greatest Man that ever lived, 
walks up and lays His hand on the bier, and says to the 
young man, "Arise!" and the dead man arises, and Jesus 
takes him by the hand and says, "Here, mother, is your only 
boy," and the good old mother throws her arms around her 
boy's neck and kisses and loves him, and the disciples of John 
say : "Did you ever see anything like that?" They saw some- 
thing that day that they never saw before — they saw Jesus 
expel death ; — death from the eyes, for what are blind eyes 
but dead eyes? — death from the feet, for what are feet that 
cannot walk, but dead feet? — death from the blood, for what 
are lepers but those who have death in their blood? — death 
from the ears, for lo and behold, there stands a deaf man, 
and the great God-man walks up and puts His fingers into his 
ears and says "Be open," and the man hears, and the disciples 
say, "Did you ever see anything like that?" The great God- 
man has expelled death from the deaf. The great God-man 
has expelled death from the grave; the open grave does not 
receive its dead that day. The disciples saw this, and they 
saw the greatest Physician that ever lived. 

3. They not only saw that He was a great physician, but 
they heard that He was the greatest Preacher that ever 
lived. After Christ healed these people he did not send 
them home. He did not come into this w 7 orld simply to make 
blind men see and lame men walk and deaf men hear and 
lepers well and to raise the dead, but He came first of all 
to preach unto them salvation, and after this multitude of 



50 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

very poor people had seen these wonderful things, the dis- 
ciples were still ordered to stand back. "I have a sermon to 
preach/' says the great Preacher. He said : (I am only giv- 
ing you the spirit of the text of the morning) Here is a man 
who had eyes and could not see, but I would have you all re- 
member that spiritually you are as blind as this man, and I 
preach unto you this morning words of life that must make 
you see God's word as you never saw it before. I would 
have you remember that just as this man who is here with 
dead limbs, could not walk, this great multitude has not been 
walking in the paths of righteousness; you have not been 
walking in the paths that lead to heaven ; you are walking on 
the path that leads to destruction." I hold up your Lord 
and Master, Jesus Christ, the greatest Man that ever lived, 
and see this great Preacher as He stands before them telling 
them a Look at those lepers, the very flesh decayed from their 
bodies, they that stand in the distance and cry out 'Unclean ! 
Unclean!' but 1 want to tell you that those lepers are just 
as fit to step into our midst without being healed, as you are 
to step into the kingdom of heaven in your sins ; you have an 
incurable disease; you are unclean, but I want you to under- 
stand that your sins shall be washed away by the blood that 
I shall shed for you when I die on Calvary. I would have 
you remember that as this man to whom I gave hearing, was 
deaf, so you are spiritually deaf to the Word of God. I want 
your ears to be open from now on, — not to hear the world 
singing, not to hear the messages of men — I have opened 
this man's ears, and I want your ears all open to hear the 
wonderful message of the Word of God." So He kept on 
preaching : "I would have you remember that I did not raise 
this man from the dead because it was better to live than to 
die, but to let you understand that you who are spiritually 
dead can be raised up. I can do it and I will do it, if you will 
give me your attention ; I can raise the spiritually dead." 

Oh, He preached such a sermon that day as had never 
been preached before. Then came the disciples of John to 
Him, and He gave them a farewell message. He said : "Now 
you can go back, and you can tell John what you have seen 
and what you have heard, and this is the message that I 
would have you deliver him : 'The blind receive their sight ; 



THIRD SUNDAY IN ADVENT. 5 1 

the lame walk ; the lepers are cleansed ; the deaf hear, and the 
dead are raised up, and the poor have the gospel preached 
to them, and blessed is he Avhosoever shall not be offended in 
me.' " 

Oh, what a word of comfort from the greatest Preacher 
that ever lived, to poor John, down in the prison ! 

II. 

I hold up to you to-day not only the greatest Man that 
ever lived, but also another one, who was the next greatest. 

Who was the next greatest man that ever lived? 

I answer: John the Baptist, 

1. None ever lived closer to his master. 

2. None was ever more intensely tested. 

3. None was ever more faithful to Jesus Christ. 

1. I say none ever lived closer to Christ. There is a 
wonderful connection between John the Baptist and Jesus 
Christ. They both were children of prophecy. You remember 
that the Lord Jesus Christ was prophesied throughout the 
Old Testament, and you will remember that Jesus said of 
John in our text : For this is he of whom it is written, "Be- 
hold I send my messenger before thy face, which shall pre- 
pare the way before thee." John is the only man who was 
ever made the subject of prophecy in connection with his Lord 
and Savior Jesus Christ, and therefore the Savior says of 
him : "Verily I say unto you, Among them that are born of 
women, there hath not risen a greater than John the Baptist." 

There hath not risen a greater than John the Baptist 1 
Why? Because there was never another man who himself 
was the subject of prophecy, except John. Why? Because 
John himself, as well as the Savior, were both announced by 
the same angel. You will remember when Zechariah was 
burning incense, there stood before him an angel, and that 
angel said: "I am Gabriel, and there shall be born unto 
Elizabeth a son, and his name shall be called John." You 
will remember that six months afterwards, the same angel 
came to Mary and said : a Thou shalt bring forth a son and 
shalt call his name Jesus, and he shall save his people from 



52 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

their sins." Both of them were announced by the very same 
angel. The greatest man, next to Jesus, that ever lived! 

Both were miraculously born. It is distinctly said in 
the first chapter of Luke, that Elizabeth was old and barren. 
For her to bring forth a son was a miracle ; as much so as it 
was a miracle that a virgin should conceive and bear the 
Lord Jesus Christ. John, then, the greatest man besides 
Jesus that was ever on earth, a miraculous birth. Jesus 
Christ a miraculous birth. 

John was the one who laid his hands upon Christ and 
baptized Him in the river Jordan. It is not, as our good Bap- 
tist friends say, that he immersed Him. The Bible does not 
say so. When He was baptized He came up out of the water ; 
the baptism was finished before He ever came out of the 
water, and there is not one thing in the Bible to show 
whether Jesus Christ had the water poured on Him, whether 
it was sprinkled on Him, or whether He was immersed, not 
one word. That verse that some people quote: "Therefore 
we are buried with Christ by baptism unto death ; that like 
as He was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, 
even so we also should walk in newness of life," does not say 
one word about immersion. It does not say we are buried 
with Christ into baptism; it does not say we are buried in 
the water ; it says "we are buried with Him by baptism into 
his death" If that verse means we must be immersed, it 
means that Jesus Christ was buried in the river Jordan. 
If it means immersed, it means you and I have got to go 
down into the river, lie there three days, as Jesus did, before 
we come up out of the water. That word of God simply stated 
that this great fact, that Jesus was dead, and buried, and 
that by baptism we receive the benefits of His burial, whether 
you have the water poured on you, whether you are sprinkled, 
or whether immersed. John did not say "I immerse," he 
said "I baptize with water ;" but I call your attention to the 
fact, whether by immersion, sprinkling, or pouring John 
did baptize Him, and he is the only man on earth who ever 
had the privilege of baptizing the Son of God, the greatest 
Man that ever lived. 

Not only did he baptize Him, but he was the only prophet 
who could take the people and lead them up, and say, "Here 



THIRD SUNDAY IX ADVENT. 53 

is Jesus; touch Him and handle Him; Behold the Lamb of 
God that taketh away the sins of the world. Isaiah was look- 
ing for Jesus to come ; Ezekiel was looking for Jesus to come ; 
Daniel was looking for Jesus to come; Jeremiah was looking 
for Jesus to come; all the prophets were looking for Him to 
eonie; but the subject of prophecy, John the Baptist was born 
before Jesus Christ was, laid his hands upon Him ; baptized 
Him; led the people to Him and said "Here He is!" The 
greatest man in the Avorld in the presence of the God-man. 

2. Not only was he closer to Jesus Christ than any other 
man that ever lived, but he was tested as intensely as any man 
that ever lived. 

There are two errors which we must try to get rid of in 
the very beginning, concerning this text. A great many 
scoffers and infidels have held this text up as a comfort to 
themselves, saying, "John the Baptist himself was an infidel." 
They say that John, even though he baptized Christ, got to 
doubting Him in the prison and sent his disciples out to find 
out whether He was the Christ or not. I call your attention 
to the fact that even the devil himself cannot make you doubt 
a thing you see with your own eyes; the devil himself cannot 
make me doubt that this Bible is a book ; he can only make me 
doubt a message which I hear. Nor is there one word that 
would indicate that John ever did doubt Jesus, and after these 
two disciples had left the multitude, Jesus said to them: 
"What went ye out into the wilderness to see, a reed shaken 
with the wind?" I call your attention to the Tact that John 
was not a reed shaken with the wind ; John was no infidel ; he 
was not a man who was doubting. 

Then the other error, which is just as great, is this, that 
many people think that John the Baptist simply used that 
as a means to send these two disciples over to get them to 
hear Christ; that it was simply a missionary spirit on the 
part of John. While I will not deny that John the Baptist 
might have had in mind that his disciples ought to hear and 
see more of Jesus Christ, yet I call your attention to the fact 
that they had heard the message in the prison; it wasn't 
necessary to send them out; they had seen and heard Him 
before. 



54 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

What is the real truth concerning the condition of John 
the Baptist? The real truth is this : John the Baptist was 
in great trouble and felt offended at Christ; and there was a 
reason for this. John the Baptist made the same mistake 
in his day that Christians are making in the present day. 
John the Baptist, reading over in the Book of Isaiah, had 
read something about the coming of Christ, and he never 
distinguished between the first Advent and the second ; when- 
ever it spoke of Christ's coming, John believed that he was 
coming and would change the world immediately and settle 
everything. He made the same mistake that you and I are 
making concerning the resurrection. There are verses in the 
Old Testament and in the New that would picture the resur- 
rection as being a day when the Lord shall come in the twink- 
ling of an eye, and raise the dead in a minute. If you will 
read the 20th chapter of Revelations you will find that there 
will be a first resurrection and a second resurrection. There 
are verses in the Bible where you can read that the Lord 
Jesus Christ is coming and you imagine that judgment day 
and his being incarnate are all one great act; and that is 
the mistake that John made. He had been reading some 
verses in the Bible like these: 

"Say to them that are of a fearful heart, Be strong, fear 
not; behold your God will come with vengeance, even God 
with a recompense; he will come and save you. Then the 
eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf 
shall be unstopped. Then shall the lame man leap as an hart, 
and the tongues of the dumb sing ; for in the wilderness shall 
waters break out, and streams in the desert." Isaiah 35, 4-6. 

He had read : 

"I the Lord have called thee in righteousness, and will 
hold thine hand and will keep thee, and give thee for a cove- 
nant of the people, for a light of the Gentiles; to open the 
blind eyes, to bring out the prisoners from the prisons, and 
them that sit in darkness out of the prison house." Isaiah 
42, 6-8. 

He had read in the 61st chapter of Isaiah, in the first 
three verses, these words: 

a The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me; because the 
Lord hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the 



T1IIUI) SUNDAY IN ADVENT. ;>.) 

meek; lie that sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to pro- 
claim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison 
to them that are bound; to proclaim the acceptable year ol 
the Lord, and the day of vengeance of our God ; to comfort all 
that mourn; to appoint unto them that mourn in Zion, to give 
unto them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the 
garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness; that they might 
be called trees of righteousness, the planting of the Lord that 
he might be glorified." 

He understood that prophecy as we sang this morning: 

"He comes the pris'ners to release, 
In Satan's bondage held ; 
The gates of brass before him burst; 
The iron fetters yield." 

In other words : John had told Herod that he committed 
a great crime and sin when he married his brother's wife and 
was living in adultery. Herod put him in prison for one long- 
year; John the Baptist sits there in that prison and Christ 
never comes to see him. Poor John is offended. He had read 
the prophecy and believed surely that when Christ would 
come he would carry out the promise to deliver the captives 
and let men out of prison, and there he was sitting day after 
day, week after week and month after month, and Jesus never 
helped him out of prison, or even came to see him, and he was 
deeply offended. He wondered after all, What is wrong? 
The question with him was not, Is there a Savior coming? 
The question with him was not, Is that the one I baptized? 
but, There is something wrong; He is not helping me; not 
coming to see me ; I must find out what is wrong and I will 
send my disciples to Him and let Him know I am in trouble. 
"Art thou He that should come, or do we look for another?" 
He was offended. And therefore Jesus sent the answer back : 
"Blessed is he whosoever shall not be offended in me." 

These things are nothing new, my friends. Now and then 
we meet with people who used to think that when once we are 
Christians we have no temptations any more; no trials any 
more ; that then we are always living in high glee and good 
spirits. Oh, my friends, the man who is a true Christian will 
find days in his life when he will feel just as John felt, I 



56 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

want to ask you this morning as you sit before me, Have you 
not had trials in your own family that made you wonder 
whether after all God had not forsaken you? It is said of 
Bengel that he was one of the best of all exegetes, one of the 
best people and one of the best Christians who ever lived, and 
yet one day in his history it just seemed to him as if God had 
forsaken him ; it seemed to him as if the heavens were brass ; 
he tried to pray and could not; and in that utter despair he 
saw a little child on the street; he called to that child and 
said, "Come in," and as the little child came near he 
said, "Can you pray;" the little frightened child at first 
stood and stammered, but at last it remembered a little prayer 
that its mother had taught it, and it said as we sang this 
morning : 

''Jesus, thy blood and righteousness 

My beauty are, my glorious dress; 
'Midst flaming worlds, in these arrayed, 
With joy shall I lift up my head. Amen." 

That moment the trouble was gone, and Bengel said 
"Now let us pray;" he got down on his knees again, lifted his 
heart up to heaven, and the burden was gone, and God lis- 
tened to him again. 

3. There are trials that Christians have ; there are tests 
that come to us; there are offences that we sometimes feel 
when we think that God has forsaken us ; and yet I say to you 
this morning that John the Baptist trusted in Christ as faith- 
fully as any man that ever lived. If he had been an infidel, 
he would not have sent his disciples to Jesus. Why did he 
send his disciples to Jesus Christ? Because that is the thing 
to do when you have your troubles and trials ; don't go around 
and talk to this man or that man, but go to your pastor, or, 
best of all, go right to Jesus Christ and tell him your trouble, 
and then you will find an answer, "Blessed is he that is not 
offended in me." 

Not only did he go directly to Jesus, but he did all for 
Jesus that he possibly could. From his earliest infancy 
until the hour of his death, John the Baptist never let a day 
pass by without doing all that he possibly could for the Lord 
Jesus Christ. Before he was in prison he preached as never 
man preached before; when in prison he held the disciples 



THIRD SUNDAY IN ADVENT. 57 

there and taught them concerning the word of God, and 
taught them the mighty truths concerning their own souls. 
Not only that,. but I call your attention to the fact that 
the Lord Jesus Christ had known what kind of man John 
was. Never in the history of the world did Jesus pass as high 
a compliment on any other man as on John the Baptist : "And 
as they departed, Jesus began to say unto the multitude con- 
cerning John: What went ye out in the wilderness to see? 
A reed shaken with the wind? But what went ye out for 
to see? A man clothed in soft raiment? Behold, they that 
wear soft clothing are in king's houses. But what went ye 
out for to see? A prophet? Yea, I say unto you, and more 
than a prophet, for this is he of whom it is written, Behold, 
I send my messenger before thy face which shall prepare thy 
way before thee. Verily I say unto you, Among them that 
are born of women there hath not risen a greater than John 
the Baptist!" The Lord Jesus Christ said this. Was John 
the Baptist a reed to be shaken by the wind? No, If he had 
been he would not have told Herod what he did. Was John 
the Baptist a foolish dude? No. You would not find him 
with kid gloves on, and with a silk hat on ; you would not find 
him trying to make a show with clothing. I suppose you 
have often noticed that all people on earth in some way 
try to make a show; if they have no knowledge or sense, 
they show it by their dress. John the Baptist was a man, 
every inch of him a man. It made no difference whether his 
clothing was made up of camel's hair or leather girdle; it 
made no difference whether he sat down to feast or not; lo- 
custs and wild honey were good enough for him; John the 
Baptist was thoroughly a man, from the crown of his head 
to the soles of his feet, and wherever he went, he stood like a 
giant and a monument; no shaking reed in him; no wind, or 
popular applause, could blow him to and fro; he had convic- 
tions and he stood up for them at any cost, and Christ said, 
there never was a greater man than John the Baptist. 



III. 

Who may become greater than the next greatest man that 

ever lived? 



58 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

1. I would say, no infidel. Infidels are not great. There 
are a great many men who think that because they reject 
this and that, it looks smart, and therefore they are great; 
especially, is this the case when they find fault with the Bible, 
and with things good and holy. If you have ever noticed an 
infidel, he always tries to appear much wiser than any one 
else. I say here to-day that : 

a. An infidel is not a great man on earth. 

b. An infidel is not a great man under the earth. 

c. An infidel is not a great man in hell. 

a. He surely is not a great man on earth. What has in- 
fidelity done for this world? Can you show me a single or- 
phans' home infidelity ever built? Can you show me a good 
thing infidelity ever did for any neighborhood? You may go 
to the lowest den and dive in this city, and I will show you 
that they are all operated by infidels. There is not one of 
you who would like to have an infidel for your partner in 
business. There is not one of you who would liKe to have an 
infidel for a husband. There is not one of you who would 
have any respect for an infidelic wife. There is not one of 
you who would like to have an infidelic neighbor. So one 
thing is sure, that no infidel can become greater than John the 
Baptist on earth. 

b. I am sure no infidel could become greater than John 
the Baptist, under the earth. It does seem to me that one of 
the meanest men on earth is the man that not only hurt his 
family while living, but keeps on hurting them after he is 
dead. To imagine that the hand that is sleeping under the 
soil should constantly thrust the dagger into the family that 
comes and looks on that grave, is horrible, and what comfort 
shall anyone find in the cemetery to walk around the grave 
of a dead infidel? 

c. And surely he cannot be great in hell. No one for a 
single moment would think that that rich man, dressed in 
purple on earth, down in hell crying for a drop of water to 
cool his burning tongue, was a great man. 

2. I go a step further and say that no Christian on 
earth can become a greater man than John the Baptist ivas. 
"Verily I say unto you, Among them that are born of women 



THIRD SUNDAY IN ADVENT. 59 

there hath not risen a greater than John the Baptist; not- 
withstanding he that is least in the Kingdom of heaven is 
greater than he.' 7 Some have told us that this being great in 
the kingdom of heaven refers especially to the kingdom of God 
on earth, as if possibly after the death of John the Baptist, 
some might be greater than John was. I call your attention 
to the fact thai: that is impossible, for three reasons: 

a. — There never was a man who lived any better than 
John the Baptist did. Those who think we can become great- 
er in this world than John the Baptist was, point forward to 
the day of Pentecost. They say that John preached, and 
when he died he never saw the day of Pentecost ; that he did 
not see the glory of the kingdom of God after Christ was 
raised from the dead. I call your attention to something. 
John the Baptist had a greater day than the day of Pentecost, 
before he was born. There never was another child in the 
history of the world that was filled with the Holy Ghost 
before it was born. When Mary and Elizabeth met for the 
first time after they heard the angel's message, the child 
leaped for joy, and Elizabeth w T as filled with the Holy Ghost. 
If there was ever a greater day of Pentecost than John en- 
joyed before he was born, I would like to see it. Do you know 
of any man on earth who could live a better life than John 
lived? You do not find John standing around in the saloon 
drinking, because he never drank any strong drink. You do 
not find that John was a glutton, because he lived on locusts 
and wild honey. You do not find that John refused to pay 
grocery bills or clothing. Though poor, he owned the girdle 
that was about him, and always was satisfied wherever he 
went. 

b. — John the Baptist not only lived a good life, but he 
preached as no man on earth ever could preach. There never 
was a man on earth who preached repentance any better than 
he did. As I said, he believed that the coming of Christ and 
the judgment was all one great act. He preached, "Eepent 
for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." An ax is now laid at 
the root of the tree. The judgment is all ready. Repent and 
be baptized. My friends, is there a man on earth who can 
preach repentance better than that? 



60 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

c. — He was not only as great a preacher as ever lived, but 
he died as noble a death as any man ever died. There he 
sits in that prison for one whole year. For a man of the 
energy and temperament that John possessed, it was a won- 
derful sacrifice. But he could have escaped, — one word 
would have done it ; one word of apology to Herod would have 
released him. Herod had married his brother's wife and was 
living in adultery. .John the Baptist, the great preacher, 
said "You are living in adultery and your soul will be lost 
unless you repent and make restitution." Herod could not 
stand the truth. Some men, when they hear the truth, get 
angry. Herod got ang^ and he took this man and said, "I 
will put yOu back behind the stone walls, where you have got 
to keep your mouth shut." He kept him there for one long 
year. I say John might have been released with one word of 
apology. Did he apologize? No. It was not right to apolo- 
gize. He said, "I would like to live; I would like to go out 
again ; I would like to preach Christ and Him crucified, but 
here I will stay until I die." And at last, while the dance 
was going on, Herod sent and had his head cut off and brought 
it before her who danced. Ladies and gentlemen, in this 
house this morning, if I had the power, I would hold up 
before every one of }^ou who go to the ball and to the dance — 
I would hold up before your face day and night until your 
conscience awakens, the bleeding head of John the Baptist ; 
and from now on, when you are dancing the whirl of sin, I 
want you to remember that that was done when the greatest 
man that ever lived, was killed, and that spirit of murder was 
generated on the dance floor. But John died. He died in 
righteousness; he died as noble a death as man ever died, 
and, consequently, I say again, no living Christian on earth 
can be any greater than John the Baptist was. 

Nevertheless, I repeat the third question of the catechism 
again : Who may be greater than even John the Baptist was? 
Answer : Your little babe. My little child in heaven. The 
least one in the kingdom of heaven, says Christ, is greater 
than John the Baptist. "Verily I say unto you, Among them 
that are born of women there hath not risen a greater than 
Jojm the Baptist; notwithstanding he that is least in the 
kingdom of heaven is greater than he." 



THIRD SUNDAY IN ADVENT. (>1 

Christmas is coming, and for some I predict it ought to 
be a very, very sad Christmas. We will wish each other a 
Merry Christmas on every hand in a few weeks, but there are 
homes, even after two thousand years of the Gospel, that 
still have fathers in them that are not children of God; there 
are homes in which there are still some mothers who are not 
children of God — God pity their children! There are some 
homes which are called Christian in which their children are 
not baptized, and how those homes can have a Merry Christ- 
mas with souls in them that have never been given to God, 
I cannot understand. I predict, therefore, that some of our 
liomes this coming Christmas, may be very sad. 

But I go a step further, and I say that even some good 
Christian homes may be sad. Maybe Christmas is not always 
the same to us. Some of us look back over the Christmases of 
the past, and we look upon those days as the happiest days in 
our history. We look back this morning to those other Christ- 
mas mornings when the little tree stood in the parlor, decor- 
ated with all the beautiful ornaments, surrounded with beau- 
tiful toys; when early in the morning, the children could 
remain in bed no longer, but leaped out and ran down and 
gathered around the Christmas tree. As I look back this 
morning to the Christmases of the past, I cannot forget those 
smiling faces; I cannot forget those sweet little voices; I 
cannot forget Christmas morning, the morning most beautiful 
of all mornings in the world. Some of you look back with me 
this morning, and then we look forward, — and, as we look 
forward to the coming Christmas, we may make it sad. We 
may think of the little voice that will not be heard this Christ- 
mas. We may think of what we miss. We may miss that 
little countenance that gave us so much joy. We may miss 
that little voice we heard last Christmas morning, and if 
we allow ourselves to think only of the Christmas in the home, 
the Christmas on earth, we may make it the darkest Christ- 
mas we ever had. But, my friends, there is a glorious thought 
in the Gospel lesson of the morning, — a thought in it that 
lifts me up, and may God help it to lift you up; there is a 
thought this morning that lifts these dark clouds of the val- 
ley, that permits us to look through the tears, up past the 
worlds and whirling world systems, that permits us to look 



62 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

past the gates of heaven that are open, that permits us to 
look up where those dear ones of our own family will cele- 
brate Christmas; they will not be with us, but they will 
stand, not holding the hands of each other around the little 
Christmas tree, but they will stand up yonder, the very least 
of them, with hands in the hand of God, around the great tree 
of life, — greater than John the Baptist. Amen. 

PRAYER. 

Our heavenly Father, we pray Thee that Thou wilt give us the true 
greatness of men ; that this true greatness may be none other than that spirit 
of true devotion and love and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ ; that we may 
live the best life that can be lived ; that we may preach by our life and by 
our words, the best sermon that can be preached ; that we may die the 
noblest death possible ; that at last we, too, may celebrate Christmas around 
the great Christ, and the tree of life, and enjoy those blessings that are in 
store for all Thy people. Hear this, our prayer, in the name of Jesus Christ, 
who taught us to pray: 

"Our Father who art in heaven, Hallowed be Thy name. Thy kingdom 
come. Thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily 
bread, and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against 
us; and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil, for Thine is the 
kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever and ever. Amen. 



FOURTH SUNDAY IN ADVENT. 



AN ADVENT AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 



John 1: 19-28. 

HND this is the record of John, when the Jews sent priests and Levites 
from Jerusalem to ask him, Who art thou ? And he confessed, and de- 
nied not ; but confessed, I am not the Christ. And they asked him, 
What then? Art thou Elias? And he saith, I am not. Art thou that Prophet? 
And he answered, No. Then said they unto him, Who art thou ? that we may 
give an answer to them that sent us. W r hat sayest thou of thyself? He said, I 
am the voice of one crying in the wilderness, Make straight the way of the 
Lord, as said the prophet Esaias. And they which were sent were of the 
Pharisees. And they asked him and said unto him, Wiry baptizest thou then, 
if thou be not that Christ, nor Elias, neither that prophet? John answered 
them saying, I baptize with water, but there standeth One among you whom 
ye know not, He it is who coming after me is preferred before me, whose 
shoe's latchet I am not worthy to unloose. These things were done in Beth- 
abara beyond Jordan, where John was baptizing. 

Sanctify us, O Lord, through Thy truth; 
Thy W T ord is truth. Amen 



Beloved in Christ : — 

Jolin the Baptist said of Jesus Christ, "He shall increase 
and I shall decrease." Like the morning star which begins 
to decrease as soon as the sun rises in the East, so John the 
Baptist, the great morning star of history, begins to decrease 
when Jesus Christ, the Son of Righteousness, with healing 
in his wings, begins to rise in the East. John decreased : Je- 
sus increased, and as people begin to wake up when the morn- 
ing star is shining and about to go down, and the sun begins 
to rise, so there was a general stir in all the world about the 
time that Jesus Christ arose and John began to go down. No 
wonder that the whole city of Jerusalem poured out and went 
down to the river Jordan ; no wonder that all Judea began to 
run down the valley; no wonder that all the surrounding 

63 



64 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

countries, as if drawn by a magnet, went down to that valley, 
until the multitudes were surrounding the greatest man that 
ever lived, when he began to decrease and the Son of God be- 
gan to increase. It is no wonder, either, that the Sanhedrin, 
that great Supreme Court, should send an embassy to inquire 
as to who it was that was causing such a stir. It is perfectly 
legitimate and right that a church court, or a church council, 
or a congregation, if you please, should be absolutely certain 
who it is that is preaching the Gospel in their midst. I know 
of no better rule for every congregation to adopt than to be 
very careful and to inquire into the very nature and person 
of him who preaches the Gospel. I was somewhat surprised 
and at the same time gratified very recently to discover really 
how much this congregation did inquire and search before 
they extended their call to their present pastor. It was right, 
and not only right, but I should urge upon you from this day 
forward, to be very inquisitive, find out all you can about 
it, and if you discover that his character is not what it should 
be, if you discover that he does not preach the true Word of 
God, put him out. You have no right to be careless about 
religion; you have no right to be careless about him who 
preaches to you the Word of God. There is a movement on 
foot in this city now, to have a great revival. Well, if four 
or five churches must go together to fill the house of God, it 
is about time they are having a revival. If it takes four 
or five congregations to fill one house of God, it shows that 
they are just about as dead as they can be. I told you a year 
ago that the kind of revival to have in every church, is one that 
begins on the first day of January and ends on the last day 
of December, and I leave it to you this morning whether my 
prophecy is not true, that every church should not be satis- 
fied until it fills up all its pews with the children of God and 
with sinners who should be converted. When we remember 
that all the people of Mansfield cannot begin to get into all 
our churches, it is a shame for the preachers and a shame for 
the Christian people that every house of God is not filled to 
overflowing, at least when there is good weather. And so I 
say this Sanhedrin, though it consisted of Levites and Jews 
and Pharisees, was perfectly correct in sending an embassy 
down to the valley of the Jordan to find out who that was 



FOURTH SUNDAY IN ADVENT. C)5 

that was causing such a stir. I am glad that John in his 
reply gave us such a beautiful 

ADVENT AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 
I. 

I call your attention, then, this morning to an Advent 
Autobiography, in which he first of all shows us his negative 
life. John does not hesitate to give them the two views of 
himself. I remember one morning going with my father into 
a certain woods to cut down a straight tree for a certain 
purpose; I remember, too, the discussion that took place 
between me and my good father. I said the tree was straight, 
and he said that it w r as crooked. I remember, furthermore, 
that when he came around where I was, he said it was 
straight, and when I walked around where he was, I declared 
it as crooked. In other words, it depended entirely upon 
which side we were looking at that tree ; and therefore, when 
you want the true biography of any man, you must not only 
know what he is, but what he is not. You must look at him 
from two standpoints. John recognized the right of the San- 
hedrin to inquire into his character and his calling, and there- 
fore he tells them, first of all, what he is not. 

1. "And this is the record of John, when the Jews sent 
priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, Who art thou? 
And he confessed and denied not ; but confessed, I am not the 
Christ. • And they asked him, What then? Art thou Elias? 
and he saith, I am not. Art thou that prophet? And he an- 
swered, No." 

In these words we learn, first of all that John the Baptist 
was not the Christ. John had such a wonderful power that 
day, that if he had just encouraged that Sanhedrin the least, 
they would have made him king. They were looking for a 
king, who w T as to be a universal king. They were waiting 
patiently for one who should take the government in his 
hands, and take it away again from the Komans and give it to 
the Jews, and through them to the world. They were ready, 
and if John had given them the least encouragement, they 
would have exclaimed to John, "God save the King!" But no, 
he was humble, so humble that he said at once, I am not the 
Christ. 
5 



66 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

Not only might he have been proclaimed king that day, 
but he might have been worshiped. They had in their hearts 
the question, Is this man the great prophet? Is this not pos- 
sibly the Messiah himself, and inasmuch as the people came 
from all directions and surrounded him, and there was such 
a power in him they had never recognized before, if John had 
simply said, I am the Christ, that whole multitude would have 
fallen down and worshiped him as the king of heaven. But 
he said, No, I am not the Christ ; you cannot make a king of 
me; you cannot worship me, and, says John, I will not give 
Satan one moment's time to put a pride in my heart that will 
ruin me. 

There was a time when the angels of God were all holy, 
but it came into the heart of one that he might rule, and he 
said, I will rule, and the result was that he became a satan in- 
stead of an angel ; that he became a serpent instead of a ser- 
vant at the throne, and John, recognizing this fact, lost no 
time. Human nature is very treacherous, and some men are 
weak, and when the devil tempts them, they stop and wait, 
until they are ruined. Consequently, John, recognizing the 
weakness of human nature, did not lose a single moment, 
but confessed, and denied not, but confessed, I am not trie 
Christ. 

2. John might have appeared that day before them as the 
great prophet Elijah. And they asked him, What then? Art 
thou Elias? (Elias is the form used in the Septuagint for 
the other name, Elijah, meaning the same.) In other words, 
Art thou Elijah, if not the Christ? This Sanhedrin was not 
ignorant concerning these matters. They had studied the 
Old Testament, and especially the last verses. In Malachi 
4 ; 5 they had read this prophecy : "Behold, I will send you 
Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dread- 
ful day of the Lord." Furthermore, they had not forgotten 
the first chapter of Luke, where we have the record of 
Gabriel meeting the father and mother of John, when he de- 
clared, I will send you John in the spirit and power of Elijah, 
So we will notice, please, that there was promised to the world 
an Elijah, and this Sanhedrin had a perfect right to in- 
quire whether this was not the Elijah, and there is no 
question about the fact that he was. The Word of God 



FOURTH SUNDAY IN ADVENT. GT 

tells us in the 17th chapter of Matthew: "And his dis- 
ciples asked him, saying, Why then say the scribes that 
Elias must first come? And Jesus answered and said unto 
them, Elias truly shall first come, and restore all things. But 
I say unto you that Elias is come already, and they knew him 
not, but have done unto him whatsoever they listed. Like- 
wise shall also the Son of man suffer of them. Then the 
disciples understood that he spake unto them of John the 
Baptist." 

In other words, my dear friends, John the Baptist was 
Elijah the Kestorer, but he was not the person of Elijah of 
Old, and consequently, in true humility, when they asked 
him, if he were Elijah, he said No. We are not surprised, 
either, that the Sanhedrin believed he was Elijah. Let us not 
forget the similarity between Elijah of Old and John the 
Baptist ; let us not forget that both of them were men of the 
wilderness ; let us not forget that both of them were very plain 
men ; let us not forget that both of them were orators ; let us 
not forget that Elijah on Mt. Carmel was just as great as 
John the Baptist down along the Jordan. Let us not forget 
that the last day that Elijah was here on earth he had spent 
some time in Jericho, and Elisha followed him; they went 
down to the river and there he struck the waters, and they 
were parted and he went over to the other side; let us not 
forget that while talking there to Elisha on the other side of 
the Jordan, all at once there came a fiery chariot and Elijah 
was taken up to heaven, taken up to heaven with Elisha cry- 
ing after him ; let us not forget that in the very place from 
which Elijah left the earth, John the Baptist was preaching 
this day. No wonder they thought this was Elijah. These 
things were done in Bethabara (or as the better manuscripts 
have it, beyond Bethany) beyond Jordan, where John was 
baptizing. Can you blame the Sanhedrin for believing that 
this was actually Elijah? And yet he said, No, I am not 
Elias. 

1. — Oh, what a wonderful contrast oetween him and that 
person iclw to-day in our country calls himself Elijah the 
Restorer! Who can read this chapter without thinking of 
the movement that is now going on in Zion City near Chicago? 
And we would not be fair if we did not recognize some simi- 



68 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

larity between John Alexander Dowie, who styles himself 
'Elijah the Restorer/ and John the Baptist. 

a. — One thing is certain, both are men of power. John 
the Baptist must have been a powerful man or he could not 
have drawn the whole city of Jerusalem and all the surround- 
ing country down to the Jordan; and if we do not recognize 
the fact that John Alexander Dowie is a powerful man, it is 
because we are prejudiced and because we are ignorant. Do 
not tell me, my friends, that any man on earth could go and 
build a city of ten thousand inhabitants and draw people 
from all parts of the world to sit down and listen to him, if 
he were not a man of poAver. Benjamin Franklin said when 
he wanted to go to the orchard and find a good apple, he usu- 
ally went to the tree that had the clubs lying under it, and I 
call your attention to the fact that whenever you can find the 
whole world pounding away, finding fault with any man, you 
can make up your minds that he is a great man. 

b. — Not only are they both powerful men, but they both 
have a great following. John the Baptist had the people of 
the holy lands standing there ready to call him the great 
prophet Elijah. John Alexander Dowie has more men listen- 
ing to him on one Sunday than any four churches in the city 
of Chicago. John Alexander Dowie may go where he pleases, 
and the multitude will follow him and listen to him. . There 
is no use denying these facts. The press has tried to down 
this thing. The press of this country has tried to make us 
believe that when in New York there were a few dozen peo- 
ple sitting around him. I made up my mind at the same time 
that the press was lying. I sent word to a certain man who 
was there, "Tell me all about it." He sent me a photograph 
of one day, and when you have time I wish you would just 
come here and look at it, — the photograph of John Alexan- 
der Dowie's services in New York, when seventy-five thousand 
people could not get in to hear him, and fifteen thousand 
people sat there spellbound and listened to him. Do not 
think for a single moment I am a follower of John Alexander 
Dowie, but I do believe in telling the actual truth at any cost. 

c. — Not only had both a great following, but John Alex- 
ander Dowie, as well as John the Baptist, is a fearless 
speaker, and says exactly what he believes at any cost. There 



FOURTH SUNDAY IN ADVENT. 69 

are few people in the world to-day who have the courage of a 
Dowie, who are willing to light the Legislature; who are will- 
ing to fight the Press ; who are willing to fight Free Masonry ; 
who are willing to fight anything they believe is wrong. No 
difference whether his convictions are right or wrong, he says 
what he believes. 

2. — In order, however, that you may not misunderstand 
me this morning, I want to proclaim loudly that John Alex- 
ander Dowie by proclaiming himself Elijah the Restorer, 
shows his great weakness. We have noticed their similarity ; 
let us notice the difference between the real John the Bap- 
tist, the real Elijah in spirit and power, and the man toho 
fraudulently to-day calls himself 'Elijah the Restorer.' 

a. — Look at their difference in humility, if you please. 
John the Baptist an humble man, dressed with camel's hair 
and a leathern girdle, out in the wilderness claiming that he 
was not worthy to unloose the latchet of his Master's shoes ; 
claiming, furthermore, that he was of all men most humble 
and did not want to be called Elias at all, though the world 
wanted to make him an Elijah. Look at John Alexander 
Dowie. No man on earth wants to call him Elijah ; no man 
on earth to-day would call him the Eestorer. The truth is 
that Jesus Christ said that Elijah had come, Elijah the Re- 
storer, and either John Alexander Dowie is lying, or he is over 
two thousand years old : one of the two. 

b. — Not only that, — John Alexander Dowie is living in 
pride. I have heard him. He struts around on the platform, 
more like a pea-fowl than a man ; I have never listened to 
a prouder man in all my life. What a contrast between him 
and the humble John the Baptist. John the Baptist lived 
down there in the wilderness on locusts and wild honey. John 
Alexander Dowie rides in a palace car, eats at the best ho- 
tels and- lives in a home, the stable of which is better than 
our parsonage — (Not complaining myself, because our par- 
sonage is too good for me — simply to bring out the wonder- 
ful contrast between the true Elijah and the false). As a Co- 
lumbus man said last week, "John the Baptist as well as 
Elijah of Old, were fed in the valley by the ravens. 'Elijah 
the Restorer' in Zion City is fed by the jays!" There you 
have the difference. 



70 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

c. — John the Baptist never went into the city, but went 
down into the wilderness, to be where the sand is found, where 
no hut is found, where no home is found, the canopy of heaven 
his roof, the air of the fields the perfumery in his home, — a 
man of the wilderness. John Alexander Dowie is not only 
one who wants a city, but wants to own it himself, has it in 
his own name, and so I say, in one word this morning, that 
there is a wonderful difference between the true Elijah and 
the false. 

3. — John the Baptist not only says that he is not the 
Christ and not Elias, but, he says, I am not even a prophet. 
"Art thou that prophet? And he answered, No." I am not 
a prophet risen from the dead, and I am not that great pro- 
phet of whom Moses speaks. Some of the people imagined 
that actually one of the old prophets had risen. May be it 
was Daniel, or Isaiah, or Jeremiah, or possibly Ezekiel ; but 
John said, I would have you to understand that I am not a 
prophet. Well, the Sanhedrin had read somewhere in Deut- 
eronomy (18 : 18-19) this wonderful prophecy : "I will raise 
them up a prophet from among their brethern, like unto thee, 
and will put my words in his mouth ; and he shall speak unto 
them all that I shall command him. And it shall come to pass 
that whosoever shall not hearken unto my words which he 
shall speak in my name, I will require it of him." Then, said 
the Sanhedrin, If thou art not one of the risen prophets, art 
thou not possibly that great prophet who was to come? No, 
says John the Baptist, that great prophet I will show you 
to-morrow. I am not that Prophet. Now you know indeed 
who I am not. 

II. 

1. — Now I will show you who I am. And so John the 
Baptist does not hesitate to tell us who he is. In the first 
place he says, I want you to understand I am a poor humble 
preacher. "He said, I am the voice of one crying in the wil- 
derness, Make straight the way of the Lord, as said the 
prophet Esaias." I am only a voice. I am a poor, humble 
preacher, not fit to put myself between you and your Savior ; 
I do not care what kind of garments I wear; I do not care 
what kind of an appearance I make ; I do not care to be lifted 



FOURTH SUNDAY IX ADVENT. 71 

up by the people and be called the prophet Elijah, or any- 
thing else; if I could I would hide my very sight, but there is 
one thing I would have you understand, that is, that I have 
a voice; that I have a God-given voice, and that with this 
God-given voice I will cry to the people and make them see 
Him who is greater than I am, Jesus Christ ! 

Not only would I not put myself between you and Christ, 
but I would have you to understand that I am not a city 
preacher. I am a voice in the wilderness. I have no garments 
like you Pharisees and scribes up there in the city of Jeru- 
salem. You do not see me walking the streets of the great 
city up there ; you do not see me a man of pride ; a man of 
fame ; a man who is known by the world at large ; but I would 
have you understand that I am down in the wilderness, and 
this wilderness is too good for me ; I am only a voice ; and only 
a voice in the wilderness; a poor country preacher, that is all 
I am ; that is what I am. 

I am not even fit to be a servant of Jesus Christ who is 
coming. I would have you understand that there is one 
among you whom you do not know, whose shoe's iatchet I am 
not worthy to unloose. If you want to know who I am, I will 
tell you in one word, that I feel myself so little and so humble 
so unfit to be a servant of my great Master, that if i 
could I would lie down and let him put His feet upon me, for 
I am not worthy to stand on a level with his sandal strings, 
— that is who I am. Oh, my dear friends, the true height 
of man in this world is the lowest humility. 

2. — Furthermore, says John, I not only am a poor, humble 
preacher, but I am a faithful preacher. I am in the ministry 
for no other purpose than to give my whole soul and my whole 
time to this office. In other words, I am not only a voice, but 
I am a voice crying in the wilderness. I am intensely in 
earnest. I would have you understand that God has given 
me a voice and I am bound to make every man hear on every 
hill-top, in every valley ; I am bound with this voice of mine to 
call, and call, and call upon poor humanity to prepare for the 
coming King, that no man, when this voice is silent, may be 
able to stand before the judgment bar of God and say, I did 
not know how to be saved. Oh, there is a secret in this con- 
fession of John; he had studied the Gospel on his knees. I 



72 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

know from my own experience that when a man gives his time 
to anything else but the ministry he is bound to fail. For 
five long years, nearly wearing out my life in other causes, 
my poor church suffered because I was not like John the Bap- 
tist, giving my voice to the ministry and nothing else but the 
ministry. That is what I am, says John ; I am faithful to my 
God and my Shepherd. 

Not only did I give my whole voice to my Savior, but I 
tell you, Sanhedrin, if you want to know who I am, I am a 
man who studies to please God, and God only. "He said, I 
am the voice of one crying in the wilderness, Make straight 
the way of the Lord, as said the prophet Esaias." Make 
straight the way ! That is what God wants of his ministry, 
— not to try to go up this little hill to please that man, and 
down this little valley to please the other. Says John the 
Baptist, You are the greatest power in the church to-day up 
there in Jerusalem ; you have got your Pharisees ; you have 
got your priests; you have got your Levites, and you think 
you are going to heaven because you are so good. I want you 
to understand that I am a minister of the gospel and do not 
care about the Sanhedrin or for any man; I want you to 
understand that when I am preaching to-day, I love your souls 
and love them dearly, but I will not say a word to praise you. 
You are a generation of vipers, and who hath warned you 
to flee from the wrath to come? In other words, you will 
notiee.that some of the hills are very steep, and some of the 
valleys very deep, but if you will follow the road from here to 
Jerusalem you will find that some of your hills have been cut 
down and some of your valleys filled up in order that you may 
go straight to Jerusalem, and, John says, I warn you sin- 
ners, I warn you Pharisees, I warn you scribes, that unless 
you repent of your sins you will be damned and every one of 
you will perish. That is making the way straight, and that 
is what I am. My dear friends, we need a ministry to-day 
willing to cut the path straight; that does not listen to this 
man or to that man, but alone to God's Word. In this en- 
lightened age, with as many Christians as we have in every 
city, like our own, filled with ungodly saloons and brothels, 
ruining and damning immortal souls, it is time that somebody 
is cutting a straight path ; time that people of God are let- 



FOURTH SUNDAY IN ADVENT. 73 

ting the people know that the man who drinks himself to 
death is going to hell; it is time to let people know that the 
man who hands the drink over the bar to make drunkards 
will be damned as well as the man who drinks; it is time to 
let people know that the man who owns the building and rents 
it for the ungodly purpose is as much to be damned as the 
man who is in the- business. No man on earth is better than 
his business; and no man who will rent his house for a bad 
purpose is any better than the worst person there. So what 
we need in the pulpits of God to-day are John the Baptists 
who are ready to say positively, I will tell you what I am, I 
fear neither man nor devil, and unless from to-day forth you 
repent of your sins and be baptized, you will be damned! 
That is what I am ! 

Not only did he tell them he was faithful to God, I will 
have you to understand, said he, that I am not only faithful, 
but I make diligent use of the means of grace. "And they 
which were sent were of the Pharisees. And they asked him 
and said unto him, why baptizest thou then, if thou be not 
that Christ, nor Eli as, neither that prophet. John answered 
them, saying, I baptize with water but there standeth one 
among you whom ye know not ; he it is who coming after me 
is preferred before me; whose shoe's latchet I am not worthy 
to unloose." 

In these words we discover very clearly that John the Bap- 
tist did not deliver a message of his own, but a message of 
his God. In this same chapter we read these words : There 
was a man sent from God whose name was John. The same 
came for a witness, to bear witness of the light, that all men 
through him might believe. He was not that Light, but was 
sent to bear witness of that Light. 7 ' 

Now, says John the Baptist, I am a man of God; I have 
been called of my God to come here and preach and I am not 
delivering a message of my own, but to bear witness of Him 
who is the great Light of the world; and I would have you 
understand that I believe the Old Testament that I am he 
who was sent, as said the prophet ; I believe every chapter in 
the Bible and every verse, and I preach God's Word and God's 
Word only. And not only that, but I would have you under- 
stand that I believe in the Paschal Lamb; I believe that the 



74 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

Old Testament doctrine is going to pass over into the New; 
I believe in Him who is standing before our very doors, 
whom ye do not know; who in Himself will have baptism; 
who in Himself will have the Lord's Supper, and who in Him- 
self has shown back in me a connecting link between the old 
covenant and the new ; and if you want to know who I am, I 
would have you understand that to-day I have baptized the 
Lord Jesus Christ ; that I have baptized your Savior ; that I 
have baptized a multitude of people ; I do not say that I have 
immersed them, but simply say, I baptize with water, and 
with water I can baptize down at the river Jordan or upon the 
hill; what I have done is in the name of God, and I have 
God's authority, and unless you repent and be baptized, you 
cannot be saved. That is who I am. 

True to the means of grace. Brethren, that is, after all, 
what you must ask for. Not what man thinks; not what 
this one or that may have in his mind, but what does the 
Lord God teach. You know the message of God and the Word 
as connected with water in baptism, and with the bread and 
the wine in the Lord's Supper ; these are the means of grace 
through which God comes to you, and it is those things which 
I preach to you, and that is what I am. And that is what 
John the Baptist was. 

3. — In the third place he tells us that he is a good evan- 
gelist. Let us not for a single moment imagine that John 
was only a preacher of the law ; John told them more than the 
law. When the Sanliedrin sent word to him to find out who 
he was, his answer included these three facts : 

a. — I bring you good news concerning One whom you do 
not know ; whom you think to be far away ; when in fact, He 
is right in your midst. "But there standeth one among you 
whoDi ye do not know." In other words, the Israelites were 
all looking for a coming Messiah; they were all looking for 
Jesus Christ, the Savior of the world, but they imagined he 
was far away yet. Oh, says John, You ask me who I am. I 
bring you the good news that the Christ who was born over 
there beyond the Jordan, in Bethlehem, when I was only six 
months old, is your Messiah ; to-day I am about 30 years and 
six months, and he is about 30 ; he is standing right in your 



FOURTH SUNDAY IN ADVENT. <5 

presence and he is the Son of God and the only Savior you will 
ever see. That is who I am. 

b. — Not only do I preach One whom ye do not know and 
who is in your midst, but I preach unto you one who is 
younger than I am, and still older. Possibly the people 
thought that John the Baptist must be crazy that day to 
claim that there is one here who is younger than he is and 
yet older. "He it is who coming after me is preferred before 
me." Oh, what a wonderful truth in those few words. Says 
John the Baptist, I would have you to understand that long- 
before I was born, long before the waters flowed down this 
Jordan, long before these hills and valleys existed, long be- 
fore there was a city of Jerusalem, long before there was an 
Abraham, long bfore there was an Adam, there was One in 
all eternity, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, who 
said, u Let us make man in our image;" that One who was 
before me is the same one that is born of Mary, born six 
months after I was born of Elizabeth, younger than I am as 
man but God from all eternity. I am the gospel preacher, the 
good news bringer, the evangelist. That is who I am. 

c. — Your savior is here. Not only that great fact, but, 
says he, the very reason I have been preaching to you to-day, 
has undoubtedly stirred up your souls; I have made you, by 
the love of God, feel your sins ; I have made you feel miser- 
able; I know that you do not know what to do next, but I 
would call your attention to the fact that I bring you good 
news ; if you will come here to-morrow I will show you One 
whom some of you have never seen ; if you will come here to- 
morrow I will show you One who is able to take your sins 
and bear them away; I will show you One who has lived 
among you ; I will show you One who came to Bethlehem on 
that first great Christmas, and He is with us yet ; I will show 
you One who is going to begin the ministry now, and has al- 
ready been tempted; One who is going to do some mighty 
wonders in your midst; I am going to decrease and he is 
going to increase; I will go down into the prison and he will 
go up on the cross ; I am nothing but a poor, insignificant mes- 
senger of God and will lose my head ; but he who is coming 
after me will lay down his life on Calvary; lie is going to con- 



76 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

quer death; he is going as a conqueror to the very gates of 
hell; is going to ascend to heaven, and is coming back to 
judge the quick and the dead, and we shall ail stand before 
God; you think many people are standing around me, but 
when the graves shall give up their dead, when the oceans 
shall give up their dead, when all the living and all the dead 
that ever were, or ever shall be, shall stand before Him, then 
you will see Who it is that I will proclaim unto you to-mor- 
row. I am the great evangelist. a Behold the Lamb of God, 
which taketh away the sins of the world !" Now go home and 
tell the Sanhedrin who I am. Amen. 

PRAYER. 

Our heavenly Father, we thank Thee for this opportunity of hearing 
Thy great truth as it is in Thy Word, and we pray Thee that Thou wilt give 
us the true spirit of Elijah and of John the Baptist to tell Thy Word plainly, 
so that all the people may hear it, to their eternal good. We thank Thee that 
Thou hast seen fit to send so many immortal souls into Thy house this rainy 
morning. As the showers fell from heaven this morning to give us the 
promise of future harvests, we pray Thee that Thou wilt let that Holy Spirit 
in great blessing shower down upon us in Thy temple at this hour. As we go 
to our respective homes to-day, may we take the message to those who could 
not be with us, and if it be Thy good will, Heavenly Father, help us to 
return this evening to learn more and more of Thy gracious Word. And if 
any in this house this morning have heard, or even preached, for the last 
time, may these words of truth concerning the Lamb of God that taketh 
away the sins of the world, make us forever Thine. All this we ask in the 
name of Jesus, who taught us to pray : 

Our Father who art in heaven, Hallowed be Thy name. Thy kingdom 
come. Thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily 
bread, and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against 
us ; and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil, for Thine is the 
kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever and ever. Amen. 



CHRISTMAS MORNING 



PLAIN PHILOSOPHY FOR POOR PEOPLE. 



Lukjs 2 : 1-14. 



HND it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from 
Caesar Augustus, that all the world should be taxed. (And this 
taxing was first made when Cyrenius was governor of Syria.) And 
all went to be taxed, every one into his own city. And Joseph also 
went up from Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth, into Judaea, unto the city 
of David, which is called Bethlehem ; (because he was of the house and lineage 
of David:) to be taxed with Mary his espoused wife, being great with child. 
And so it was, that, while they were there, the days were accomplished that 
she should be delivered. And she brought forth her first born son, and 
wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger ; because there 
was no room for them in the inn. And there were in the same country shep- 
herds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flocks by night. And lo, 
the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round 
about them : and they were sore afraid. And the angel said unto them. Fear 
not: for behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all 
people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David, a Savior, which is 
Christ the Lord. And this shall be a sign unto you: Ye shall find the babe 
wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger. And suddenly there was 
with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying : 
Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men. 

Sanctify us, O Lord, through Thy truth; 
Thy Word is truth. Amen 



Faithful Bearers in Christ: — 

First of all, allow me to wish you a Merry Christmas! 
Whether you and I shall have the privilege of meeting to- 
gether on another Christmas here on earth, I do not know ; but 
one thing I do know, that if you remain faithful to the Babe 
that was born in Bethlehem's crib, if you should not be able 
again to meet with us here on earth to celebrate Christinas, 
you will have a better Christmas next year than you have 
this; and, on the other hand, if you will not be faithful to 

77 



78 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

the Babe that was born in Bethlehem, and you cannot cele- 
brate Christmas on earth next year, yon never will have a 
better one, and your home will be miserable forever. It is 
therefore important that you should listen very closely to the 
teaching of the Babe of Bethlehem. When He sent word to 
John the Baptist about His ministry, He said, Tell him the 
poor have the gospel preached to them. 

1. The poor always have been with us. The great ma- 
jority of the people in the world are poor people. Only a 
comparatively few have more than they need to get along in 
this world; many have hardly sufficient. 

2. It is not only true that the majority of the world is 
financially poor, but it is also true that the great majority 
have not the advantages to go down deep into philosophical 
questions, — have not the advantages to receive the highest 
education that this world affords. 

Therefore. I take pleasure this morning in giving to 
you 

PLAIN PHILOSOPHY FOR POOR PEOPLE. 
I. 

This rich world j dead in sin, 
Kept Christ out of the inn. 

1. That is plain Philosophy for poor people. This rich 
world — poor little Bethlehem, only a few miles south of rich 
Jerusalem. The Lord Jesus Christ was not born in the city 
of wealth, but was born in the village of poverty. The rich 
city had no room for Jesus, and even in the little town of 
Bethlehem there was no room for Him in the inn. The wealth 
of this world has never had very much room for Jesus Christ. 
The wealth of this world has always been in danger of losing 
souls. 

2. "Dead in sin" explains it all. We read in Ephesians 
2:1, "And you hath he quickened, who were dead in tres- 
passes and sins." And in the fifth verse: "Even when we 
were dead in sins, he hath quickened us together with Christ 
(by grace ye are saved)." From these words we learn plainly 



CHRISTMAS MORNING. 79 

that the world in its natural state is spiritually dead, and 
that the dead soul spiritually has no door to open for Jesus 
Christ, the Son of God. 

3. There was no room for Him in the inn, but had Joseph 
and Mary been king and queen, had they been people of 
wealth there would have been room made in the inn; but be- 
ing poor, they were told, "There is no room for you here." 
— No room for Mary — no room for Him who became flesh 
and made the worlds before He became flesh, — no room for 
God Almighty — no room for the Son of God who became 
man. Think of it. There you have plain philosophy for 
poor people. This rich world, dead in sin, kept Christ out 
of the inn ! 

II. 

This world with all its power. 
Must God obey each hour. 

1. Knowingly, it would not do this. If the Lord God 
bad said to Csesar Augustus, "You must write out a decree 
that the world must be taxed/ 7 he would have rebelled against 
the proclamation. It was not natural for the natural man to 
obey the Lord our God. In the very beginning of the world 
God laid down His commandment. Did Adam and Eve 
obey? No. He wrote the commandment in their hearts, 
telling them, in the very first commandment who He was. 
Did the world obey? No. He told them in the days of Noah 
to remember and do better. Did they do it? No. They re- 
belled against their God. After the flood, when Noah and 
his three sons and their wives got down around the altar and 
gave thanks to the only true and living God, surely, my 
friends, on that day the whole living world knew Him. But 
come on down in history. What became of the nations after- 
wards? They forgot their God and Lord. The explanation 
lies simply in this great fact, — that the carnal mind is 
enmity against God, and the natural man will never do what 
God tells him to do. 

2. Practicalhj, therefore, the world thinks it is doing its 
own business. Practically the world thinks it is disobeying 
God all the time, and it really is. You ask the natural man, 



80 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

"Are you obeying God? He says, No. Do you want to obey 
God? No. Are you busy? Yes. What are you doing? lam 
attending to my own business." 

3. Caesar Augustus on that day when he sat down and 
wrote out a proclamation that all the world should be taxed, 
believed that he was one of the busiest men on earth, and be- 
lieved that he was strictly attending to his own business, that 
God Almighty did not have a thing to do with what he was 
doing, and yet the Lord was making him do, ignorantly, just 
what He wanted him to do. The Plain Philosophy of the 
dealing of God with sinners is this: The sinner says, "If 
God tells me to do a thing, I will not do it ; I am going to do 
my own business." Then God says : "Well, if you think you 
are going to disobey me, and you think you are going to run 
your own business, I am going to put into your heart and into 
your soul — hard as your heart is, I can get down to the cen- 
ter of it — I will put a thought in there that must carry out 
my will. Caesar Augustus, you think you are running your 
own business; I will make you think you are running your 
own business, and I will make you run My business," and so 
Caesar Augustus picked up his pen, thinking he was doing 
his own business, thinking he was opposing the Lord God's 
business, and did just exactly what God expected him to do. 

a. We find this throughout history. Look at Alexander 
the Great. Alexander the Great did not know his God any 
more than Caesar Augustus did. Alexander the Great 
mounted his horse and started East with his little army to 
conquer the world, having nothing else in view but the am- 
bition to become a great ruler. Alexander the Great said, 
"I am going to do my business ; little do I care for the true 
and living God;" but God said, "Christ is going to be born 
in about three centuries, and the people are talking in their 
own language in every village and town, and there must be 
a universal language. Alexander the Great, I will make use 
of you. I will send you out East ; you think you are doing 
your own business ; you think you care little about the true 
and living God, but I am going to make you spread the Greek 
language all over the world, so that when Christ comes the 
New Testament may be written in Greek, that the preachers 
of the Gospel of that day may write and preach in that Ian- 



CHRISTMAS MORNING. 81 

guage, and that the world may receive the message. Alex- 
ander the Great, yon are my servant, though you think you 
are a ruler." 

b. The same was true of Caesar Augustus. God had pro- 
claimed in the 5th chapter of Micah and in the 2nd verse, that 
the Lord Jesus Christ should be born in Bethlehem of Ju- 
daea. Caesar Augustus knew nothing about the prophecy. 
Caesar Augustus knew nothing about the virgin Mary living 
at Nazareth engaged to Joseph. Caesar Augustus simply 
took it into his head : It is time we have a registration made 
of all the people of my dominion, and wrote down that every 
man must go to the village where his fathers were born, and 
write down his name on the register. Caesar Augustus w T rote 
out the edict that compelled poor Mary, in a condition that 
not one woman in a thousand would leave home, to walk a 
great distance and come to the little inn, in the little town of 
Bethlehem, on the very day and at the very hour that the 
Word of God must be fulfilled, and Jesus Christ was born at 
Bethlehem. "In other words," says God, "Caesar Augustus, 
you have got to obey me." 

c. And that was not only true in that day of Caesar 
Augustus, and in the day of Alexander the Great, but it is 
just as true to-day. If you will read the latter part of the 
13th chapter of Revelations closely, you wall discover, as I 
have shown you before, the Lord God has pictured what 
would take place in the United States of America, and when 
you read that very closely you will discover that He said that 
the time should come when all people who should know each 
other with the mark in the right hand should go so far as to 
cause men not to buy or sell unless they had the mark. These 
labor unions do not know that is in the Bible. These labor 
unions do not know that God said these things are coming 
true ; they think they are running their own business ; neither 
do they care what God says to them ; they have their meetings 
on Sunday in open defiance of God's holy law ; and we read 
that in Chicago to-day they are killing men who will be kind 
enough to go and bury their neighbors' dead; and if you will 
read the very chapter I have called your attention to, it is 
said they will kill them. In other words, my friends, God is 



82 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

running His business and He is compelling even wicked men 
to carry out their wickedness to such an extent that the 
world must get its eyes opened. 

It is just as true of governments as it is of other matters. 
I suppose the government of the United States thinks to-day 
it is running its own business; I suppose England thinks it 
is running its own business; I suppose Germany thinks to- 
day it is running its own business. A question or two : How 
does it come that North and South America was not one 
vast strip of land with parallel shores? Why, in the days of 
the Boer war, did not the Germans go down and stand by the 
Boers with the love in their hearts for the old German and 
the Dutch? Why did England go down there and do those 
dastardly deeds? Why is there an isthmus called the Isthmus 
of Panama, narrow, and yet standing there like an adaman- 
tine wall for centuries, keeping back the navies of the world 
from going directly over to the Pacific? Why are all these 
things? Why is it just now decided by the government of the 
United States that there shall be a large canal cut through 
that isthmus? They have tried it and talked about it for 
three centuries. Why just now? My friends, it is no accident 
that Germany is related to England by marriage, — God had a 
hand in it ; it is no accident that England has control of 
Africa, — God has a hand in it ; it is no accident that North 
America and South America were connected by an isthmus 
that held the nations back until the proper time; it is no ac- 
cident that this country right now at the present time is going 
to cut a canal through that isthmus that is going to change 
the face of the world by five thousand miles, and will unite 
all the Anglo-Saxon races along the waters of the world, the 
Slavs on the one side and the Anglo-Saxon on the other, to 
bring about the last great struggle for liberty in the world. 
God still rules! And so I say to you this morning, in Plain 
Philosophy, this world, with all its power, must God obey 
each hour. 

As a conclusion to this thought let me quote to you just 
a few words from a very recent book written on this subject : 

"How happens it that all these lands are found under 
Anglo-Saxon flags in the very generation when the Pacific 
becomes decisive of the world's destinies? Such facts are 



CHRISTMAS MORNING. 83 

God's great alphabet with which He spells for man his Provi- 
dential purposes. For a hundred years now, blind men have 
been quarreling with our national destiny or with divine 
Providence. They declared that Jefferson violated the Con- 
stitution in the purchase of Louisiana ; they opposed the pur- 
chase of Florida; they were vehement in their opposition to 
the acquisition of Texas and California; they called Alaska 
"Seward's folly; 9 ' they rejected Hawaii when offered as a 
■gift, and would have had Dewey sail away from the Philip- 
pines, leaving them an apple of discord to the European 
powers, or dooming them to anarchy. 

"But, somehow, notwithstanding the lack of human fore- 
sight, notwithstanding human blindness and opposition, these 
many different lands, belonging to many different nations, 
are found, in a great world crisis, in the hands of one great 
race, upon which they confer decisive power. 

"If there is no God in such history, there is no God any- 
where ; for an 'absentee God' is for all practical purposes, no 
God at all. 

"This race has been honored, not for its own sake, but for 
the sake of the world. It has been made powerful, and rich, 
and free, and exalted — powerful, not to make subject, but 
to serve; rich, not to make greater gains, but to know the 
greater blessedness ; free, not simply to exult in freedom, but 
to make free ; exalted, not to look down, but to lift up." 

III. 

The Word of God must stay, 
If night must turn to day. 

1. I have already called your attention to the fact that 
in Micah 5 : 2 we were told that the Lord Jesus Christ, the 
ruler of Israel, should be born in Bethlehem. 

2. Notice, if you please, how near this failed to be true. 
In the first place, as I have already stated, Mary, espoused to 
Joseph, was in such a condition that every physician, and 
every true friend on earth, and every espoused husband, 
would have said : Mary, you must stay at home. There is 
not one woman in ten thousand who would have said : I will 
dare to go to Bethlehem; and yet in her delicate condition of 



84 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

health she is compelled to go. Compelled to go — would not 
have been compelled to go had not Caesar Augustus written 
down that they must. 

3. That night when the Lord Jesus Christ was born, all 
Jerusalem was asleep, and yet the shepherds out in the fields, 
saw a great light, and in a moment's time there stood an angel 
and gave the announcement, that this day there is born in the 
city of David a Savior, which is Christ the Lord, and in- 
stantly the host of heavenly angels sang : "Glory to God in 
the highest; on earth peace, good will toward men." That 
night had turned into day, and all took place, why? In order 
that God's Word must stay ! The Word of God must stay, if 
night must turn to day. If I had no other teaching in God's 
Word than this one fact — this prophecy and its fulfillment 
— it would at once and forever convince me that this Bible 
is God's Word. This is not the only prophecy that seems 
impossible. The very fact that the prophet Isaiah had an- 
nounced that a virgin should conceive and bear a son and 
should call his name Immanuel, was just as impossible, but 
the Word of God had to be fulfilled. And is it not remarkable 
that in the New Testament nearly every statement of any 
historical fact, goes on to say this thing happened so and so, 
"in order that the Scriptures might be fulfilled?" And God is 
going to fulfill every word in this Book if He has to turn the 
world upside down; He is going to fulfill every word in this 
Book if He has to take a woman who is sick, pull her out of 
her bed and make her walk sixty miles; He is going to fulfill 
every word in this Book if He has to take a king who does not 
know Him, and with one scratch of the pen make the people 
in this world go back and forth, and up and down, over the 
nations of the earth, to bring that Word true. Therefore get 
rid of your doubts on this Christmas morning about whether 
God means what He says. He does mean it. He does mean it, 
and He is going to demonstrate before the end of the world 
that every word must come true to the letter ; and, my friends, 
when the judgment is past, and the saved are in heaven and 
the lost in hell, there will be no question then whether there 
is a hell or whether there is a heaven. God's Word must 
stand ! 



CHRISTMAS MORNING. 85 



IV. 

Sleepers must learn at last, 
That God works ever fast. 

I suppose that night when the Savior was born, thousands 
and thousands of people were sleeping in Jerusalem, and, if 
any of them were awake, they thought, "Oh, how slow God 
is!" For four hundred long years they had heard nothing of 
the prophets. Malachi was the last man who spoke of the 
coming of Messiah. I repeat it, for four long centuries 
the people heard no prophecy. The Old Testament was closed 
and Jesus was not born, and thousands and thousands of peo- 
ple who were still looking for the Messiah, said, "Oh, when 
will this slow God send that Son?" They imagined that God's 
ways are so long and that He does so little. That same 
night when the Savior was born, I suppose all Jerusalem and 
all Judaea, with the exception of a very small spot, thought, 
"Now we are sleeping and God is sleeping too." But I tell 
you God was busy that night. Jesus Christ, the only begot- 
ten Son of God, was born down in the little stable in Bethle- 
hem. There was no sleeping there. The shepherds out on 
the plains of Judaea were awakened — there was no sleeping 
there. The angels of God not only came, but the original 
language clearly shows that they came with mighty force 
and flight from Heaven's gate down to earth, and went back 
again. How far heaven may be away from yonder distant 
stars, I do not know; but one thing I do know, that the Lord 
God was so busy that night that the angels of heaven came and 
returned, the shepherds took their flight to Bethlehem, and 
saw the new born King, and the star of the East broke loose, 
and the wise men followed, and they all were looking for the 
Son of God. I would have you remember this morning, dear 
friends, that sleepers must learn at last, that God works 
ever fast. God is not asleep this morning. Many of us are 
looking forward to certain things that we think ought to hap- 
pen, and wonder why they do not happen, and sometimes we 
think, "Oh, how slow God is." The trouble with us is, we are 
so blind we cannot see ; the trouble with us is, that we are so 
blind that we cannot see anything but our little bit of work 



86 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

around where we are. If we could look into space eternal ; if 
we could look into the vast machinery of God's universe, we 
would say, "Oh, how busy God is day and night! We would 
not think that He is doing nothing, nor would we think that 
He is working slowly, but oh, how fast, how fast! I would 
have you understand this morning, based upon God's Word, 
that not only is the judgment coming, but it is coming just 
as fast as it can come. I would have you understand that 
many thousand things you think are far off, are on their way 
toward you, and they are coming on angel's wings, and no 
time is lost, day nor night. Sleepers must learn at last, that 
God works ever fast! 

V. 

This truth all must now hear : 
The Lord is very near. 

1. That night while the people were sleeping in Jerusa- 
lem, I suppose they thought that away off beyond yonder 
stars somewhere is the Lord God, but the truth of it is that 
they could have walked down there in a few minutes to where 
Jesus was in the crib at Bethlehem; they were surrounded 
with the angels of God, and not only a few of them, but the 
whole heavenly host. I suppose there never was so much 
heaven on earth in the history of the world from the time sin 
entered the world until now, as there was that night when 
they thought that God was so far away. Four hundred years 
no prophecy had been heard. Never did God seem further 
away than that night — never was He closer to earth. 

2. Applying this great truth to the words we have been 
preaching to you for the last four or five Sundays about the 
coming of Christ, have we not been prepared to receive Him 
this morning into our hearts and souls? Have you remem- 
bered since you have been in this house this morning that 
Jesus Christ is right with us? u Lo, I am with you alway, 
even unto the end of the world." "Where two or three are 
gathered together in My name, there am I in the midst of 
them." When He went away, He said, "I will not leave you 
(literally) orphans, but I will come again and take you unto 
myself, that where I am, there ye may be also." Yes, dear 
little orphans (speaking especially to inmates of Children's 



CHRISTMAS MORNING. 87 

Home who composed part of audience) God did not leave you 
comfortless, but lie lias placed some one over you to take care 
of you, and I want you to thank your God in heaven for the 
mother and the father, whom this Father of the fatherless 
has placed over you to take good care of you. 

3. And I would say to all who sit before me to-day, Do 
not forget that Jesus Christ is very close — very near. Will 
you open the doors of your hearts to-day to let Him in? Will 
you let Him become a part of your household, the Head of 
your family; the Ruler of your life; the very Ruler of your 
thoughts ; the Governor of your tongues, and everything that 
is to be done for the glory of God? 

VI. 

A Christian choir, you know, 
Will never sing for show. 

1. One of the grandest choirs that ever sang on earth was 
that choir that came from heaven and sang on the plains of 
Bethlehem, and one thing that struck me very forcibly this 
last week, that I never thought of before, is that not one of 
them sang a solo, — not one of them. I have no fault to find 
with solo singing, but there is a wonderful temptation in it. 
There are very few Christians who can remain humble enough 
to sing a solo and give all the glory to God. Not one of those 
angels sang a solo. The first angel that came simply an- 
nounced the Savior's birth, and then the heavenly host came, 
and they all sang. 

2. And for whom did they sing? Did they go up to the 
city of Jerusalem and ask for an audience in the Sanhedrin, 
and sing for the rulers? Did they go up to the castle of Csesar 
Augustus and say, "We will sing for the king, if you give us 
something?" Did they stand upon the streets of Jerusalem 
and sing for the greatest city in the history of the world? 
Did they call upon the musicians to come and join with them 
and listen? No. They went out on the plains and sang to 
poor shepherds. Was it for show they were there? There 
you find the very spirit that ought to occupy the heart of every 
singer in the church of God. Let us be careful that we do not 
get to thinking we are put up here for show ; that we are sing- 



88 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

ing simply to be heard; that we are singing to entertain. 
There is a wonderful temptation there. I believe I love 
music as well as any average musician, and yet I cannot listen 
to singing, unless it be for the glory of God, without wishing 
I were not there. 

3. Those angels that sang did not go out in the morning 
at ten o'clock, and say, "World, look here, and we will show 
you a choir that came from heaven.- ' They did not sing for 
show, but they came down and stood in the night and sang 
as no human voice on earth can sing. I saw in the paper last 
night that out in Indiana some choir had absolutely refused 
to sing any longer because the minister of the Gospel found 
fault with them for reading jokes during the service. I hope 
the report is not true, but if I had such a choir as that, they 
would stop their ungodly actions, or get out of the church in 
fifteen minutes, or I would. Whenever a people of God 
haven't am^ more sense than to sit down and read the devil- 
ish jokes — because it is always the devil that makes sacred 
things look funny — during a divine service, it is about time 
they are learning what the house of God is for, and what 
songs of praise are for, and what choirs are for. 

4. I learn, furthermore, that when these angels did sing 
in the night, in the presence of the poor shepherds, they sang 
not for their own glory. Gabriel did not stand out in front 
and say, "Listen to Gabriel." There was no announcement 
made in Jerusalem the next day, which one could sing the 
best, but they all were there, — the heavenly host — like a 
cloud of fire, in the presence of the poor shepherds. And they 
not only said that this praise must go above the priests, and 
the Levites, and the Pharisees of Jerusalem; not only that 
this praise must go above the angels standing here, but the 
praise we sing to-night must go up higher than yonder stars, 
higher than any eye of man ever penetrated — Glory to God 
in the highest, and on earth peace, good will to men! Up 
there is where the glory begins, and for that reason we want 
to begin our service every time, if possible, with "Glory to 
God in the highest, on earth peace, good will to men." I hope 
that every member of this church to-day will learn from the 
angels' song at the birth of Christ, that "A Christian choir, 
you know, will never sing for show." 



CHRISTMAS MORNING. 89 



VII. 

Poor homes can be made bright, 
The darkest Christmas night. 

1. We all must or will feel when Christmas comes, that 
some homes are not remembered as they should be. We think 
of those homes in the tenement houses, dark, black, filthy 
rooms, drunken husbands, sometimes no clothing to wear, no 
bread to eat, no decent meal for the children, and it almost 
makes our hearts bleed ; and yet, there is another side to this 
question. * The very Savior that was born in Bethlehem was 
born — not in a tenement house, not in an inn — but in a 
low, common stable ; born in the crib of Bethlehem ; no bed ; 
no pilloAY ; no place to lay His head. I call your attention to 
the fact that in this little Christ, in the Savior of the world, 
who is adored in this morning hour, there is comfort for the 
poorest people in the world ; they can live until they die, and 
that is all the rich can do. We are here, my friends, to live, 
and it does not take a great deal to exist, and when life is 
done there is just as much in store for the poorest man that 
ever lived as there is for the wealthiest. When life is over, 
then comes death, and let me say to all the poor this morning, 
that that is all the rich have ; they simply live and at the end 
of life comes death; they take nothing with them, and how 
much better off are they than the poorest? 

2. But there is something brighter than this. The poor- 
est people in the world can have Jesus Christ in their homes. 
Jesus Christ in his providential prophecy does not make the 
prophet say, "I will be born in the house of Csesar Augustus/" 
God could have brought that about. He did not say "I will 
be born in the palace of Jerusalem," but, "I will be born down 
in Bethlehem — the little town of Bethlehem." And so He 
arranged it, that He might be born as the poorest child on 
earth never was born, in order that the poor might have com- 
fort in their holy Savior, Jesus Christ. Therefore, no differ- 
ence if you have to live in a stable; no difference if your bed 
is on the straw ; no difference if your Christmas gift is noth- 
ing more than hay, remember that Jesus Christ, the only 



90 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

Savior of the world, is just as willing to be with you as to 
be with king Caesar. 

3. The poorest people can live and die saved, and that is 
something the rich can hardly do. There is no man on earth 
so poor that he cannot be saved just as well as the rich. Those 
angels sang "Glory to God in the highest/' — but they did not 
stop there — "and on earth peace, good will toward men." 
"Peace," says Jesus Christ. His name is the Prince of Peace, 
and when the Prince of Peace was born, the whole world was 
at war; this sinful people are still warring with each other, 
but the Christian people all over the world are crying, "Peace ! 
Peace!" Just as soon as the Prince of Peace takes posses- 
sion of our hearts, we have peace with God ; and having peace 
with God, we want peace with our fellowmen. And this 
peace is not only dissatisfied with bloody war, but this peace 
is dissatisfied with hatred in our own hearts. I cannot help 
it if a thousand people in the city of Mansfield hate me, but 
I can help it if I hate any man. I am a child of God, as I 
hope you all are, and can have no hatred toward any man on 
earth, and I can state in the presence of the Christ-child to- 
day, that I love dearly every man, woman and child on God's 
earth. It is this then, that the poorest man on earth can 
have. It is salvation ; and the rich man, with all his bonds, 
with all his Avealth, and his hard heart, trusting more in his 
wealth than in his Savior, locking the doors and keeping 
Jesus out, will some of these days die also ; but he will not be 
saved unless he gives his heart and all he has into the control 
of the Lord God to whom it belongs. Therefore I say to all 
of you that the thing for us to do on this Christmas morning, 
is to be true subjects of the Lord Jesus Christ, rich or poor, 
faithful unto Him until death, giving Him all the glory, and 
laboring as if our very salvation depended upon what we 
do, and yet remembering that we are saved wholly by grace. 
This, my friends, is the true philosophy of a Christian, — 
Plain Philosophy for Poor People. May God bless us all, 
and give us the riches that there is in the salvation which 
comes to us through the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. 



CHRISTMAS MORNING. 91 



PRAYER. 

O Lord, our God, we thank Thee for this beautiful morning, and for the 
privilege we have had once more of proclaiming Thy truth as it is in Thy 
Word, which shall stay though heaven and earth shall pass away. We pray 
Thee, O God, that Thy Word may be more blessed to our souls this morning 
than it has ever been before. If men like Alexander the Great and Csesar 
Augustus, and the rulers of the world to-day, ignorantly and unconsciously 
are writing the lines that are carrying out Thy providential designs, O God, 
if all this is done for the fulfillment of Thy most holy Word, how can we 
escape the knowledge of one of Thy sentences in this Bible? We pray Thee, 
therefore, that Thou wilt on this last Christmas day for many here on earth, 
give us the desire, and the power to carry out, of beginning the new comnig 
year with a deeper search into Thy Word than we have ever had before. We 
pray Thee, O God, that Thou wilt give a rich blessing to every poor home, and 
to every rich home in this world. O Lord God, help us to realize this morning 
that the poorest home may be rich with Thee, and the richest home without 
Thee is miserably poor. Grant unto us that peace which comes alone from 
the Prince of Peace, and may it spread from man to man. We pray Thee, 
Heavenly Father, that Thou wilt give us the true spirit of praise, as Thou 
didst to the angels on the plains of Bethlehem and give us, furthermore, the 
desire to see the Christ, that, like the shepherds of old, we may be willing at 
any hour, even in the dangerous night, to leave our flocks behind us and see 
the Great Shepherd. All these favors we ask in the name of the Shepherd who 
taught us to pray : 

Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name. Thy kingdom 
come. Thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily 
bread, and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against 
us ; and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil, for Thine is the 
kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever and ever. Amen. 



FIRST SUNDAY AFTER CHRISTMAS, 



THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. 



Luks 2 : 33-40. 



HND Joseph and his mother marvelled at those things which were spoken 
of Him. And Simeon blessed them, and said unto Mary His mother, 
Behold, this child is set for the fall and rising again of many in Israel ; 
and for a sign which shall be spoken against; (Yea, a sword shall pierce 
through thy own soul also) that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed. 
And there was one Anna, a prophetess, the daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe 
of Aser; she was of a great age, and had lived with an husband seven years 
from her virginity; and she was a widow of about four-score and four years, 
which departed not from the temple, but served God with fastings and prayers 
night and day. And she coming in that instant gave thanks likewise unto the 
Lord, and spake of Him to all them that looked for redemption in Jerusalem. 
And when they had performed all things according to the law of the Lord, 
they returned into Galilee, to their own city Nazareth. And the child grew, 
and waxed strong in spirit, filled with wisdom ; and the grace of God was 
upon Him." 

Sanctify us, O Lord, through Thy truth; 
Thy Word is truth. Amen 



Beloved in Christ : — 

By the grace of God we are again permitted to reach the 
last Sunday of a great year. On this Sunday we are reminded 
of two things that are inseparable : 1. The last Sunday of 
the year and old age. 2. Christ and His Church. 

1. The last Sunday of the year and old age. As the years 
die one after the other, so the time is coming when you and I 
must reach the last Sunday in our lives. No wonder that 
this lesson is so beautifully connected with the two aged 
saints, Simeon and Anna. As this Sunday is so close to the 
end of the year, so those two aged people were at the last Sab- 
bath of their lives. 

2. Not only do we find that the last Sunday of the year 
is inseparably connected with old age, but we find also that 

92 



FIRST SUNDAY AFTER CHRISTMAS. 93 

Jesus Christ and His church are inseparable. This same 
chapter tells us of the birth of Christ and of His presentation 
in the temple at Jerusalem, to show us the inseparability of 
the Lord Jesus Christ and His Church. 

I wish to speak to you this morning about 

THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH, 

and may the Holy Spirit help us both to speak and to hear, 
that we may learn more of — 

I. Its foundation. 
II. Its location. 
III. Its congregation. 

I. Its Foundation. 

The foundation of the Christian Church is none other 
than the little child born in Bethlehem, Jesus Christ Himself. 
We are told by the prophet Isaiah (8 : 13-15) : 

"Sanctify the Lord of hosts himself, and let Him be your 
fear, and let Him be your dread. And He shall be for a sanc- 
tuary; but for a stone of stumbling and for a rock of offense 
to both the houses of Israel, for a gin and for a snare to the 
inhabitants of Jerusalem ; and many among them shall 
stumble and fall, and be broken, and be snared and be taken." 
The Lord Jesus Christ speaks Himself in Matt. 21 : 42-44 : 
"Jesus saith unto them : Did ye ever read in the Scrip- 
tures, The stone which the builders rejected, the same is 
become the head of the corner : this is the Lord's doing, and 
it is marvelous in our eyes? Therefore say I unto you, The 
kingdom of God shall be taken from you, and given unto a 
nation bringing forth the fruits thereof. And whosoever shall 
fall upon this stone shall be broken : but on whomsoever it 
shall fall, it will grind him to powder." 

We read of this same foundation in Ephesians 1 : 19-20 : 
"Now, therefore, ye are no more strangers and foreigners, 
but fellow-citizens with the saints, and of the household of 
God ; and are built upon the foundation of the apostles and 
prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner stone ; 
in whom all the building fitly framed together groweth unto 



94 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

an holy temple in the Lord: In whom ye also are builded 
together for an habitation of God through the Spirit." 

From these words we plainly learn that Jesus Christ cru- 
cified, rejected, and accepted, is the foundation of the Chris- 
tian Church. 

1. To this crucifixion Simeon also refers when he ad- 
dressed the mother of Christ and calls attention to the fact 
that her soul should be pierced : "Yea, a sword shall pierce 
through thy own soul also, that the thoughts of many hearts 
may be revealed." Little did Mary understand that day 
when she went away for the first time and took her dear 
little child to go into the temple, and laid it in the hands 
of that aged sire, Simeon ; little did she understand when he 
pronounced a blessing upon the parents and sang the song 
of salvation as he looked into Jesus' face; little did she 
understand when he told her that her soul should be 
pierced, what it meant; but she found out afterwards, when 
the apostles had forsaken their Lord and Master, with the 
exception of one, when Mary stood alone, with the 
exception of John, before the cross of Christ on Calvary's 
hill, and she saw the hands of her Son nailed to the cross; 
and saw the feet of her Son bleeding; and saw the sword 
thrust into His breast and into His loving heart, — a sword 
went through her soul. It was in that hour that the Lord 
Jesus Christ, the Corner Stone, was being cut out as the 
foundation of His Church. 

And when we look at that crucifixion, if we look clearly 
we shall find not only the heart of Jesus opened, and the 
heart of Mary pierced, but we shall find our own hearts 
thrown open and our thoughts revealed. Simeon said that 
her soul should be pierced in order that the thoughts of 
many might be revealed. Oh, what does the world think? 
Not always what the tongue says. Men come to me and 
complain about this, and about that, and I am slow to make 
up my mind that they are saying exactly what they think. 
The truth of it is that some people hold up one thing as a 
pretense, when down in their hearts they are thinking 
about something else. Men often say things about their 
best neighbors, when the real trouble is always back, not 
revealed to men, but God knows it; and if you want to know 



FIRST SUNDAY AFTER CHRISTMAS. 95 

the secret thoughts of the world to-day, look on Calvary's 
hill; look at those men setting the nails on the hands of 
Jesus and driving them through; look at them as they 
stretch forth those hands and lift up the cross and let it 
fall; look at them as they spit into the face of Jesus and 
buffet Him with their fists; look at them as they drive the 
thorny crown down on His head; look at them as they say, 
"If Thou be the Son of God, help Thyself and come down 
from the cross;" look at them as they thrust their tongues 
out at Jesus Christ. All that took place right in my heart 
and yours. We may not know it, but the truth of it is that 
if the Lord Jesus Christ had not already taken possession 
of your heart and mine; if the Holy Spirit had not given us 
a faith in the crucified Lord; if our hearts were still in their 
natural state, we would carry on that crucifixion right 
down in this little world of our own hearts, and we will 
never know ourselves until God shows us as we are, and 
shows us as we are through the crucifixion on Calvary. 
In other words, those men were only representative of you 
and me; they did just what every natural man would have 
helped to do under the circumstances. 

2. We find therefore not only that Christ crucified is 
the foundation of the Christian Church, but Christ rejected. 
"And Simeon blessed them, and said unto Mary, His mother, 
Behold, this child is set for the fall and rising again of many 
in Israel ; and for a sign which shall be spoken against." 

Set for the fall and for a sign which shall be spoken 
against. It would seem very strange, would it not, that 
this same rock should be set for the fall of many in Israel? 
And yet it is true. The same government that protects 
you and me as good citizens, is the same government that 
will drive you and me behind prison walls if we do not 
obey. The same rock that helps to hold this temple up a« 
a foundation stone, is the same rock which, if it fell from 
the roof, would crush your brains out. The same Lord 
Jesus Christ that has come to save the world, and is the 
Corner Stone of His Church, is the same Rock that we read 
of a moment ago, that will crush to powder the man who 
rejects Him. In other words, the Lord Jesus Christ has 
come into the world to save, and only to save, and those 



96 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

who reject Him are not only lost, but they are so lost that 
they have fallen to the lowest depth. 

In other words, the Lord Jesus Christ is a foundation 
stone that people must either accept or they must reject. 
"He that is not for Me is against Me; and he that does not 
gather with Me, scattereth." There is no neutral ground in 
Christianity. There is no such thing as a man's being not 
a Christian, and yet not a child of the deviL Every man, 
woman and child in this house to-day, and in the city of 
Mansfield, and in the world, is this very moment either a 
child of God or a child of the devil. Either this Rock will 
be a foundation upon which to rest, or it will be the Rock 
that will grind you to powder. 

This Rock is spoken against, says Simeon of old — : "And 
for a sign which shall be spoken against." Is it not true? 
Simeon did not speak this of his own wisdom, but by the 
Holy Ghost, and I would like to ask if in the history of the 
world this great truth has not been shown every century? 
It was not long after this until Herod sent out his message 
that every child under two years of age should be killed. 
Oh, how he hated the Christ-child! It was not very long 
after this until the people began to speak against Christ, 
until they had incited enough people to burn one hundred 
and eighty-five millions of Christians. He was spoken 
against. And in the days of the Reformation, when Dr. 
Luther, and other reformers with him, began to tell the 
old rotten Church that a man is not saved by works, but 
alone by the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, it made that 
rotten Church so angry that it kindled the fires and burned 
thousands in a single night. 

And, to-day wherever you may look, if the people are 
not children of God, they are children of the devil against 
God. There are families, my friends, not half a mile away 
from where I stand, that would just as soon see the devil 
come into their homes as a preacher of the Gospel. There 
are people to-day by the hundreds and thousands who do 
not love the Church and do not love the Bible and have 
nothing too hard to say against every Christian movement. 
This Rock is rejected, and will continue to be rejected by 



FIRST SUNDAY AFTER CHRISTMAS. 91 

main as long as the world stands, and yet, my friends, 
thanks be to God, it is also accepted. 

3. "And Joseph and His mother marvelled at those 
tilings which were spoken of Him." AVhat things? It is 
said that Simeon had taken the little child up in his hands 
and said, "Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in 
peace, according to Thy Word, for mine eyes have seen 
Thy salvation, which Thou hast prepared before the face 
of all people; a light to lighten the Gentiles, and the glory 
of Thy people Israel." In other words, my dear friends, the 
reason that Simeon and Anna were so happy that day is 
because they went to the temple where the light was to be 
found, and having found that light, they accepted it, and, 
having accepted it, they lived in it and proclaimed it to the 
world. 

And just so, my dear friends, if people want to accept 
this Lord Jesus Christ as the foundation of the Church, first 
of all they must hear the Word of God. "Thy Word is a 
lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path." If the people 
will not hear the Word of God, they will never come to the 
light that will lead them to the foundation stone; but 
having heard the Word of God, if they will accept it, then 
they have found the light, and having found it, live in it, and 
He will take them up in His arms, for He says, "The Son 
of Man is come to seek and to save that which was lost;" 
and, having found us, poor, lost condemned creatures, He 
gave His life for us, and we accept Him, and live in Him, 
and can say by faith: "Mine eyes have seen Thy salvation; 
now lettest Thy servant depart in peace." 

Thus, my dear friends, you have learned this morning, 
on this last Sunday in 1903, that the only foundation of the 
Church of God is Jesus Christ, crucified; rejected; accepted, 

II. Its Location. 

Where shall we find this Church? What is its location? 
"And when they had performed all things according to the 
law of the Lord, they returned unto Galilee to- their own 
city Nazareth." They were in the temple at Jerusalem. 
The temple was a magnificent building, but, my friends 

7 



98 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

the Church of God does not consist of rock, of brick, or of 
wood. 

1. The location of the Church of God is there where 
you find the law of God. In olden times when you wanted 
to find the tabernacle, you had to go to the place where 
the holy law of God was kept in a box that was lined with 
gold in the Holy of Holies; and that law of God is still with 
us to-day. Jesus Christ said in His sermon on the Mount, 
"Heaven and earth shall pass away, but not one jot or one 
tittle of my law shall pass away." The moral law, which 
is contained in the ten commandments, tells us our duty 
to our God, tells us our duty to our fellow-men, and is a law 
that never can change, because it is truth, and never can 
change as long as God Himself does not. 

If you want to find the Church of God, you must go not 
only where the law of God is, but you must go where the 
law of God is taught. I do not care how large a temple may 
he, or how niany members there may be in a church, or 
how many people may call themselves Christians, if the 
law of God is not preached and taught and remembered 
every day, the very foundation of the Church of God and its 
location is gone; for remember that this Book says that 
the law of God is the schoolmaster which brings us to 
Christ. Some one may say, "What I want to hear is not 
so much law, but Gospel." The fact is that you do not care 
one thing about the Gospel if you do not love the law; and 
the truth of it is that you never appreciate the Gospel until 
you go down a little deeper into the law. The man who 
loves the physician the best is the man who has been near 
death's door, and by the physician's ministrations and care 
has been brought back to life, — that is the man who will 
publish that physician to every sick neighbor. The reason 
that so many people in the present day have so little use for 
the Gospel, and grace, and salvation, is because they have 
never learned the stern truths written in the holy law that 
they are lost and condemned, and the grace of the Lord 
Jesus Christ only has saved them. So if you want to find 
the location of the Church of God, go where the law of God 
is taught strictly, and sternly, and constantly. 



FIRST SUNDAY AFTER CHRISTMAS. 99 

2. But it would be a mistake to preach law only, — just 
as great a mistake as it would be to preach Gospel only. 
The law, as I told you a moment ago, is the schoolmaster 
to bring us to Christ. What good would it do to stand by 
the bedside of a sick man and tell him he has some deadly 
disease that is going to drive him to death, if you have no 
remedy? And what good does it do to tell men that this 
law of God condemns them, if you cannot bring them any 
salvation? But thanks be to God, there is a Savior; thanks 
be to God, there is a Gospel; and thanks be to God that 
Gospel is not hard to find. The Gospel is the good news 
that Jesus Christ has come into the world to save lost sin- 
ners. "The Son of man is come to seek and to save that 
which was lost." People come to me and say, "Is it true 
that a little infant by nature would be lost?" I do not say 
that an infant ever will be lost. I leave that in God's 
hands. But I do say that if it is not by nature lost, God 
never came to save it. He did not come to save saved 
people; He came to save lost people; and I tnank my God 
to-day that I have been lost, and therefore I have a Savior 
who has come to save me. There is nothing plainer in the 
Bible than this fact, "Except a man be born again, he can- 
not enter the kingdom of God." — No difference how old he 
is, no difference how young he is, but I preach to you a 
Christ that came to save, and to save that which was lost, 
and He does it by grace, and by grace only. This, my 
friends, is the Gospel, and this is the news that you should 
hear this morning, and you should hear every morning. 
Doctor Luther said that that man w T ho can distinguish law 
from the Gospel is a Doctor of Divinity. He said, further- 
more, that no minister of the Gospel should ever preach a 
single sermon without preaching enough law to show a lost 
man that he is lost, and will never finish that sermon until 
he has told that man by the Gospel how he can be saved ; and 
in that law and in that Gospel, you will find the Church of 
God located. 

3. When these people presented Christ in the temple 
that day, they had the law. It was according to law that 
the mother took her little babe and presented it for purifi- 



LofC. 



100 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

cation; it was according to law that she brought her two 
little turtle doves and pigeons and offered them as a sacri- 
fice, but it was the Gospel that she handed over to Simeon; 
it was the Gospel that Anna found that day. The Church 
of the Lord Jesus Christ is not only located where the law 
is found, and where the Gospel is found, but where the holy 
sacraments are administered. 

In this same chapter we read that when Jesus Christ 
was eight days old, He was circumcised and called Jesus. 
Many a mother would have said: "It is too cold to-day to 
take this little child out of this stable;'' many a mother 
would have said, "We never can stand it to take him up to 
the temple to-day; we will put this thing off;" but, no, the 
Word of God was plain, that when the child had reached 
the proper age he should be taken to the temple for purifi- 
cation, and be circumcised. They obeyed God's Word to 
the letter. Circumcision, as you all know, was that act and 
that ceremony that was transformed in the New Testament 
to baptism, as you can read in the second chapter of Colos- 
sians. In other words, if you want to find the Church, you 
must go where we carry out God's holy sacraments to the 
letter. I do not call that a Church which simply preaches 
and then stops and never baptizes anybody. I do not call 
that a Church that performs a certain ceremony called the 
Lord's Supper and changes God's words of institution. I 
do not call that a Church which trifles with God's holy sac- 
raments or the means of grace. "There are three that bear 
record on earth, the Spirit, and the water and the blood, 
and these three agree in one." W T herever you find these 
three you find the Church. Wherever you find people listen- 
ing to God's Word, and obeying it; wherever you find this 
Word of God and water in holy baptism applied to every 
soul that is to be saved; wherever you find the bread and 
the wine given to people as God says it shall be done, not 
as an emblem, but as a reality — "Take eat, this is My 
body, and take drink, this is My blood ;" wherever you find 
the people not changing or twisting a single syllable of 
God's holy Word, but giving these things exactly as God 
says, and carrying them out to the letter, there is where 
you will find the Church, and nowhere else. The Church 



FIRST SUNDAY AFTER CHRISTMAS. 101 

does not rest upon one rock here and another rock there, 
but it rests wholly and solely upon Jesus Christ. Here is 
the foundation and the location, where the Word of God 
and the holy sacraments are administered, I do not care 
whether it is out in a corn-field; whether down along the 
Jordan, wherever you find the means of grace, there you 
will find the location of God's holy Church. 

III. It's Congregation. 

This leads me to speak, not only of its Foundation and 
its Location, but of its Congregation. 

1. First of all let me say that the congregation should 
look very closely after the little children. The very center 
of the temple of Jerusalem, according to the lesson of to-day, 
is Jesus Christ, the child. Jesus Christ, the little child. 
Simeon takes Him in his arms, and Anna looks at Him and 
blesses Him. Dear friends, the Christian Church can never 
afford to overlook the children, and I speak of this especi- 
ally at this time because there are many professed Christians, 
even in Mansfield, who seem to be in doubt as to whether 
little children are members of the Church. Lutherans ought 
not to be in ignorance on this question. If you will go to 
that table and pick up the minutes of the synod, you will 
find the report says there are so many members baptized 
and so many members communicant. If you read that in- 
telligently you will understand there is a wonderful differ- 
ence between members baptized and members communicant. 
If you will read the second chapter of Acts through care- 
fully you will find that the Lord God says that three thou- 
sand were baptized on a certain day, and He added to the 
Church daily such as should be saved. It is a mistake for 
men to think they join Church. I never joined Church, and 
never will. The day I was baptized, God added me to His 
Church, and that is the end of it. God adds people to His 
Church. There are too many human joinings these days. 
What we want is for God to take children in holy baptism 
and say, "These are Mine," and therefore these little chil- 
dren ought to be told at home, "You are members of the 
First Lutheran Church just as much as papa and mamma 



102 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

are," and if they are not baptized they are not members ? 
and older people are not members until they are baptized. 
"Go ye into all the world and make disciples of all nations, 
baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, 
and of the Holy Ghost.-' We therefore ought to see to it 
that not a child of Christian parents is unbaptized; and 
then, when they are baptized we should bring them to the 
temple ; they should sit down by the side of their parents in 
the house of God. I thank my God that in looking back 
over my forty-three years of life, as far as I can look, I can 
only see seven Sundays when I was not in the temple of God, 
and then I would have been there if typhoid fever had not 
held me on my back — not boasting — I have nothing to 
boast of — if my parents had not done their duty, I might 
have been sitting over in yonder jail to-day, instead of stand- 
ing here preaching the Gospel. God adds to the Church 
these dear little children, and when they are added there, 
keep them there. Why do you permit your children to run 
home from Sunday-school? I am speaking to parents, the 
members of this church. You think they do not understand 
a sermon? I have discovered in my experience that 
children understand a sermon just as well as older people 
do. The Word of God is such a wonderful thing that it 
is too deep for the deepest philosopher, and yet it is very 
plain to a fool. The Word of God is such a wonderful thing 
that it fits itself to the brain and heart and mind of every 
hearer. It is such a wonderful thing that three hundred 
people can take three hundred different messages home from 
the same discourse; and I repeat it again, you are making 
a mistake when you do not bring your children to the Sun- 
day-school, and if you do not educate them in the Word of 
God, teach them to sing songs of praise and listen to God's 
Word from their very infancy. Christ in the temple at forty 
days of age, in the hands of an old father and mother, and 
they have seen their salvation in Him. 

2. Again, I would say that this congregation of the 
Christian Church ought to throw its loving arms around 
the young boys and girls in the congregation. If it were 
not so near home I would like to tell you a sad, sad, story 
that came under my own observation in the last twenty-four 



FIRST SUNDAY AFTER CHRISTMAS. L03 

hours, — but I will not mention it; I will take you away from 
our own home and call your attention to the boys and girls 
that are going astray, breaking their father's and mother's 
hearts and ruining their own souls, because nobody seems to 
rare whether they are in the Sunday-school or not; because 
no one seems to care whether they are in the church service 
or not. I said to a fallen woman only a few days ago, "When 
have you been to church last?" She did not remember; but 
the police could tell me when she was in the livery barn last, 
the police could tell me when she had been sinning last. I 
tell you, my friends, it never fits to be a child of God, and 
live in sin ; it never fits to do wrong and come to church, 
and when that boy of yours begins to try to get away from 
God's house, and when that girl of yours is not pleased with 
the sermon any more, the truth of it is they are sinning and 
think you do not know it, and they are going to destruction, 
and it becomes the duty of the Church of God to go out 
after these boys and girls and throw 7 her arms of love around 
them and bring them home again. Anna was a pure girl. 
It is said here, "she was of a great age and had lived with 
an husband seven years from her virginity." She was not 
a fallen girl marrying some man, but she was a pure virgin. 
Let me say to the young ladies in this audience to-day, Be 
pure, and remain pure under all circumstances, for when 
"wealth is lost, nothing is lost; when health is lost, some- 
thing is lost ; when character is lost, much is lost, and when 
heaven is lost, all is lost." 

Young men and women should be in the house of God. 
If there is ever an age in which we need more than ever the 
grace of God, it is from the age of fifteen to twenty-five; 
in that age when the physical structure is so full of life; in 
that age when temptation is all around us and no experience 
back of us; in that age when people think they know it all, 
and know so little ; it is that age that needs the loving arms 
of the mother Church around them for their protection. I 
would therefore invite every young man and every young 
woman, not only here to-day, but through you I give the 
invitation to others, to come to God's house and be found in 
the Sunday-school ; come to divine service, and never fail, 
unless bad health keeps you at home. 



104 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

3. It is the place where you should find every married 
man and every married woman. I refer especially to par- 
ents. Look at Joseph and Mary. "And Joseph and His 
mother marvelled at those things which were spoken of 
Him." Many mothers tell me, "I used to go to church, but 
I cannot go since the baby was born. I used to go to the 
house of God, but I cannot go now, — we have a child in the 
home." I know a family not twenty-five miles from here 
that raised eighteen children, and they did not stay away 
from the church; and we have raised a few ourselves, and 
they never kept us at home, except the mother a little while. 
So I say to you that it is only an excuse and nothing but an 
excuse. Oh, let young parents remember that it should not 
be their duty to say, "Go," but it should be their duty to say, 
"Come." Parents ought to take their children by the hand 
and say, "Come on, let us go to God's house; let us hear 
God's Word; let us sing songs of praise to His holy name; 
let us, like the mother of Jesus Christ, and Joseph, go to the 
temple," no difference how small the babe is. 

4. I love to see in God's congregation the aged fathers, 
gray-headed sires, men who have fought the battles of life, 
who have gone through trials that some of us have not 
dreamed of yet, who are standing on the verge of the grave, 
where with feeble hands they are knocking at the very doors 
of heaven. Come to God's house. Look at Simeon of old. 
We do not read very much in the Bible about this man; 
all we know is that he was an old man, standing in the 
temple of God, waiting to see Christ. We are told by tra- 
dition that he was the father of Gamaliel, the teacher of 
Paul. We are told he was the son of Hilel; we are told, 
furthermore, that he was blind, and that when the Lord 
Jesus Christ was put into his arms, he looked at Him and 
his eyes opened and he there received his sight, and there- 
fore he said, "Mine eyes have seen Thy salvation." Whether 
these traditions are true or not, we do not know, but one 
thing I do know, that Simeon of old, a devout Christian, 
waiting for the consolation of Israel, filled with the Holy 
Ghost, was found in the temple that day, and if he had not 
been in the temple he would not have seen Christ; and I 
know, aged fathers, that every time you are out of the house 



FIRST SUNDAY AFTER CHRISTMAS. 105 

of God on Sunday morning, you are missing Christ that 
morning you ought to be here as long as your tottering 
limbs will carry you; you ought to be here for the encourage- 
ment of the lazy young men who say they cannot go to the 
house of God; you ought to be here for the encouragement 
of the youth all over the world ; you ought to meet the young 
men on the street and say, "Come on, let us go to the house 
of God. I have been young and am now old, and I know 
what you need. You need Christ. Come on to the temple 
of God." 

5. Not only should the aged fathers be in the temple 
of God and in its congregation, but the aged mothers should 
be here. Look at Anna, a prophetess, the daughter of Phan- 
uel, of the tribe of Aser ; she was of a great age. Just how 
old she was I do not know; we can almost tell how old she 
must have been. It is said here distinctly that she was a 
widow about eighty-four years; it is said she was married 
seven years ; so there was at least ninety-one years since the 
day of her wedding; she surely must have been something 
like fifteen or twenty years of age when she married. Anna 
was over one hundred years old; so old that she could not 
walk to church any more, and so she moved her bed down 
to the temple that she might not miss Christ; so old that 
she could not step up the stairway any more; but she said, 
"I am going to live and die in the temple ; I must hear God's 
Word." Oh, beautiful picture, — aged, aged Anna in the 
house of God ! And, dear mothers, you who are listening to 
me this morning, you do not know how much good you are 
doing to sit here; you do not know what an encouragement 
it is to the broken-hearted young wife; what an encourage- 
ment it is to the young girl ; to the young people with their 
struggles ; and what a glorious picture it makes, when stand- 
ing in this Christian congregation, when looking over these 
heads we see these hoary heads, these crowns of honor, these 
heads that have been in this world these many, many years, 
and soon shall wear the crown of eternal life. 

Such is the Christian Congregation; such, my friends, is 
the Location, and such is the Foundation of the Church of 
God ; and may we all so drink in these truths to-day that we 
may begin the new year with a new life, a new consecration, 



106 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

new Sunday-school classes filled with the Annas and filled 
with the Simeons, and filled with the young virgins, and 
filled with the pure hearted young men, filled even with tlie 
fallen ; bring them in, and all of them cleansed with the blood 
of Christ, which is able to cleanse unto salvation. Amen. 

PRAYER. 

We ask Thy divine blessing, Our Heavenly Father, upon this last ser- 
mon on this last Sunday morning of this year, and we pray Thee, O God, 
that every father and every mother, every aged sire, and every young man 
and every young woman, and every child in this house to-day, may realize 
what a glorious blessing it is to be in the congregation of Christ's Church. 
And we pray Thee, O God, that Thou wilt help us to appreciate the loca- 
tion of this church, where Thy Word is preached in its purity, and Thy 
holy sacraments are administered as Thou hast instructed ; and we pray Thee 
that Thou wilt help us to realize furthermore that in Christ we rest upon a 
foundation which is the Rock of Ages. O Lord, do Thou help us in this 
hour to have in our hearts a stronger faith than we ever have had before, 
in the true and living God. We ask Thee to go with us to our homes, and 
bless every home into which we shall enter, and may the message of peace 
from God be heard in those homes ; and may all of us resolve henceforth 
as long as we live, to come to the temple of our God. All this we ask in 
the name of Jesus, who taught us to pray: 

Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name. Thy kingdom 
come. Thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven. Give us, this day, our 
daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass 
against us. Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For Thine 
is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever and ever. Amen. 



NEW YEAR'S DAY, 



FOUR JEWELS FROM JESUS. 



IvUKE 2: 21. 



^ ^1 ND when eight days were accomplished for the circumsising of the 
j _JL Child, His name was called Jesus, which was so named of the an- 
gel before He was conceived in the womb." 



Dear Brethren in Christ : — 

"What shall I wish thee this New Year — 
Health, wealth, prosperity, good cheer, 
All sunshine — not a cloud or tear? 
Nay ! only this : 

"That God may lead thee His own way, 
That He may choose thy path each day, 
That thou mayst feel Him near alway, 
For this is bliss. 

"I dare not ask aught else for thee, 
How could I tell what best would be? 
But God the end of all can see; 
His will is best. 

"To know He rules — come loss or gain, 
Sorrow or gladness, sun or rain ; 
To know He loves — in ease or pain, 
Is perfect rest." 

This, my dear friends, is my New Year's wish to von 
all. 

Hanging from the Star of the East, reaching over to 
the dark clonds of the future, is suspended the golden 
chain of time with its 1903 links. How far this may pene- 
trate into the future I do not know, but one thing I do 
know, on the last link that is before us hang — 

107 



108 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

FOUR JEWELS FROM JESUS. 

Let me show you these this morning. 
I. All years the last will soon be past. 

"And when eight days were accomplished for the cir- 
cumcising of the child, His name was called Jesus." 

How T long the world was looking for a Savior, and some 
thought He never would come; but at last He was born, 
and the Star of the East led the way first to the Word of 
God, and then to the crib. The Child was born and at the 
age of eight days he w^as circumcised, when the "days w T ere 
accomplished." "All years the last will soon be past." How 
many things there are in this world that seem to be so far 
away, and on this New Year's morning I would call your 
attention to the fact that All years the last will soon be 
past — our years of labor; our years of health] our years of 
sickness; our years to be saved; the years to be numbered. 

How hard some of us must labor from early childhood 
until the present time, — w T ork — work — work; how many 
of us cannot afford to do without work a single month; we 
are living from hand to mouth; we are saving; we are trying 
to be honest, but it means work, and we do not know of a 
day's rest that is coming for us very near, and yet, my 
friends, the day is coming when we shall not be able to find 
work, and the day is coining when we shall not be able to 
do another day's work; some morning not far away we 
shall have done our last day's labor. All years the last 
will soon be past. 

This is just as true of our health. Some of us can boast 
this morning of not having an ache nor a pain in our bodies, 
of as perfect health as the Lord can give us poor sinners 
here on earth; and oh, how rich we are when we have no sick- 
ness, when we can stand before man and before God and 
say, "I do not feel that I have a member of my body." 
How wealthy we are! If any one on this first day of this 
New Year can boast of perfect health, he should spend the 
day with thanksgiving to God. But, my dear friends, let 
us not imagine that we shall always be so well. Many a 
one is stretched out to-day on his bed of pain that last New 



NEW YEAR'S DAY. 109 

Year was well, and many of us who are well to-day, may, 
before the end of this year, find ourselves in agony and 
pain.. All years the last will soon be past! 

This Jewel from Jesus, that the days were accom- 
plished, is true of every one of us in time. Not only is it 
true with regard to health, but it is true with regard to 
sickness. I hear some one moaning at this hour, saying, 
"Oh, that I could say what you say ; oh, that I could declare 
that I am well,'-' and if that cry does not come silently from 
those sitting in these pews, it does come from manya home. 
There are families in our own church that cannot be here 
this morning because of sickness in their homes. Oh, what 
pain! — what it means to lie on the flat of your back, unable 
to turn to the right or the left ; — what it must mean not to be 
able to take a swallow of water or to eat a bite of bread 
without agony and pain ! — and yet, my friends, there is no 
road so long that it has no end. All years the last will soon 
be past! There is no suffering in this world that will not 
come to an end, and it may come to an end this very year. 

I call attention to the fact that the days to be saved are 
numbered for every man. There is not a day in which the 
Lord will not save those who come to Him, but the days 
for you and for me to be saved are numbered. There are 
people sitting before me this morning who undoubtedly 
will be in eternity before 1905 ; there are people in this city 
and in this state, and in this world, who will be saved in 
1904 or they never will be. This year means a great deal 
to the lost world. Our Savior on the eighth day after His 
birth was called Jesus, and the angel said He should be 
called Jesus because He should save the people from their 
sins. That same name is before us to-day as the Star of 
Jacob to guide us through this dark world into the heavenly 
light beyond, but oh, how many are not thinking on this 
Xew Year's day of their precious souls ! — how many are 
still living in sin without asking God's forgiveness! — how 
many are still living on as if they were to live forever! 
Oh, that I could point the whole world this morning to this 
first Jewel from Jesus, that All years the last will soon be ; 
past ! 



110 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

It is not only true of salvation, it is just as true of the 
days themselves. I call your attention to the 5th and 6th 
verses of the 10th chapter of Eevelation: "And the angel 
which I saw stand upon the sea and upon the earth lifted 
up his hand to heaven, and sware by Him that liveth for- 
ever and ever, who created heaven and all the things 
that therein are, and the earth, and the things that 
therein are, and the sea, and the things which are therein, 
that there should be time no longer." Every man in the 
United States to-day unconsciously is writing down the 
number of years since Jesus, his Savior, was born, but the 
time is coming when the angel of God shall stand, with one 
foot upon the earth and the other upon the sea, and, his 
hand lifted up toward heaven, shall declare, "Now. time 
shall be no longer. The years are all written; the last day 
has been lived." All years the last will soon be past. 

II. We must each day our God obey. 

"And when eight days were accomplished for the cir- 
cumcising of the child, His name was called Jesus." 

Could not the innocent Son of God escape the knife at 
the age of eight days? Must the little Babe in Bethlehem 
already shed blood, typifying the blood that shall flow on 
Calvary's hill? Why must that little Child bleed oh the 
first day of January in the first year of our Lord? "And he 
that is eight days old shall be circumcised among you, every 
man child in your generations." (Gen. 17 : 12.) "For I tes- 
tify again to every man that is circumcised, that he is a 
debtor to do the whole law." (Gal. 5 : 3.) "In whom also 
ye are circumcised with the circumcision made without 
hands, in putting off the body of the sins of the flesh by 
the circumcision of Christ; buried with Him in baptism." 
(Col. 2 : 11-12.) In all these words, both from the Old Testa- 
ment and from the New, we learn that it was God's com- 
mand that the male children at the age of eight days, 
should be circumcised, a sign and an evidence that the sins 
must be cut away and thrown away. We are taught in the 
New Testament that those who are circumcised are debtors 
to do the whole law. The Lord Jesus Christ came into the 



NEW YEAR'S DAY. Ill 

world not only to be baptized, but to be circumcised, in 
order that He might put Himself under the law and obey 
the law in its fullness. From these words we learn then 
that the golden jewel that hangs up before us this morning, 
from Jesus, is this : We must each day our God obey. 

All the commandments must be obeyed, and use made 
of all the means of grace. The Lord our God did not give 
us this Book as an ornament; He did not have the 
commandments written with His own finger and preserved 
in the ark of the covenant, and written in the hearts of men, 
to be trampled upon. It becomes your duty and my duty 
on this first day of the New Year, not simply to resolve this 
or that, but to resolve to obey God's commandments, not 
only this day, but every day. Therefore we should make 
diligent use of the moral law; we should study that law 
morning, noon and evening; we should study this law not 
only the first day of the year, but every day in the year; we 
should study the Word of God, not only in the childhood 
of life, but throughout all the years. We must each day 
our God obey. Let us make up our minds this morning, by 
the help of the Holy Spirit, that we shall live nearer to our 
God each day this year, than we ever have before. Think 
of it, how much nearer we are to death — how much nearer 
we are to the judgment — how much nearer we are to the 
great beyond! Life is becoming more earnest every day. 

Let us not only try to obey these commandments each 
day, but I say every hour of the day. Moses told the chil- 
dren of Israel that they should study the Word of God, and 
especially the commandments, and teach them to their 
children, early in the morning, at noon, and in the evening, 
on the public highway, at home, when they sat down and 
when they arose ; they should have this Word of God, as it 
were, on the ends of their fingers, on their foreheads, and 
over the door, everywhere, that they might not forget a 
single day that they must their God obey. And so I would 
wish on this first day of this year 1904, that you might every 
day serve your God and obey from early morning until 
late at night. Begin early in the morning to think of the 
commandments of your God, at noon do not forget the Word 



112 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

of your God, and in the evening do not forget jour 
God, and at night do not forget your God. Oh, how 
many people there are who can go to Sunday-school in the 
morning, but where do they spend their afternoon? How 
many people there are that can be decent at home, but 
how they act Avhen away from home! How many people 
there are that act like Christians as long as the sun shines 
upon them, but when the sun goes down and the darkness 
of the night has come, where are they? Let us each day 
our God obey, from the first hour until the last. 

And so I would say that we should each day our God 
obey, not only through the twenty-four hours, but from 
childhood until old age. Our little children ought to be 
taught the great honor of obedience, — the manliness* if 
you please, of obedience; they ought to be taught when 
young men and young women, that there is nothing so 
beautiful as obedience to God's holy law, and when they get 
to be married men and women they should still love the 
Lord their God, and love His commandments, and love His 
great truths that lead us and guide us on the path of life, 
and when old age comes, and the gray hairs come, we should 
still love the Lord our God and be willing to say: "One 
thing have I desired of the Lord, that will I seek after, that 
I -may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my 
life, to behold the beauty of the Lord and to inquire in His 
temple." 

This should not only be true of the whole life, but it 
should be true of the whole year. How many resolutions 
are formed on the first day of each January, and possibly 
kept a few weeks, but what is done in the middle of the 
year, and what is done toward the end of the year? My 
dear friends, one day in God's sight is no better than the 
other; all days are alike to Him. Why should a man be a 
better Christian on the first day of January than he should be 
on the last day of December? Why should he be a better 
Christian in the winter months than in the summer? 
Why should you be a better Christian in the spring than in 
the fall? We must each day our God obey, is the Jewel 
from Jesus. 



NEW YEARS DAY. 1 L3 

III. No brighter year did yet appear. 

"And when eight days were accomplished for the cir- 
cumcising of the child, His name was called Jesus * 

— Wonderful name! 

There are a great many things before us which are 
dark and gloomy, so far as human sight is concerned. 
How little we know about to-morrow ! How little we know 
about the coming week! How little we know about what 
may be in store for our families in this year! Great things 
will take place in our history. We do not know what will 
befall your family or mine, but there is one thing that 
we do know, that should be before us this morning, through- 
out the year and throughout life, — that precious name 
Jesus — the Name of all names to guide us safely to the 
haven beyond. It is said of that great master of art, 
Leonardo de Vinci, in 1497, when he had finished that 
great work of his, The Last Supper, on the Dominican con- 
vent walls, the people gathered around it, and he stood 
there disguised in their midst to listen to their criticism 

— he had worked for three long weeks at a little ship 
down at the corner of the painting — he was surprised 
to find that the people were looking at the ship and admir- 
ing it and speaking of it, but little was said about the 
central figure. His great object was to make every face 
in that Lord's Supper look at the face of Jesus, and when 
he discovered that the people were looking at the little 
ship, he went home disgusted. That night, when others 
were sleeping, he went into the covenant, picked up his 
brush, and with one stroke spoiled everything he had done 
in the three weeks; he destroyed the ship in the painting. 
He said: "I want the people to look at Jesus and not at 
the ship." Oh, that I could this morning, with one stroke, 
turn the eyes of the world in this coming year to Jesus, 
and Him only! No brighter year did yet appear. 

The Word of God has never been more interesting than 

it is now. It is the same old Word; it is the same old 

Bible that our grandfathers and our great-grandfathers 

had on their tables, and yet, my friends, as time is rolling 

8 



114 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

on, and the fulfillment of the prophecy is taking place, 
new things are coming up in that Word which we never 
saw before. It is a mine of golden treasure, and the longer 
we dip into it the more gold we bring out. This Word 
of God has been to my own soul in this past year what it 
never has been before, and I pray my God that it may be 
for me in the coming year what it never has been before. 
We are told that some ministers of the Gospel go to the old 
barrel for their sermons. I cannot see how any man of 
God, as the ages are rolling by, the years are growing 
brighter, the Word of God being better understood, can 
be satisfied with his old sermons. It is the old truth 
that may be dipped out new, and I repeat it again, that 
never in the history of the world has the Bible been such 
an enlightening book; never has it had such a fullness 
of meaning as it has now, and wall have in the year 1904. 
There never has been a time w T hen souls could be saved 
any better than they can be saved this year; there never 
was a time when the Gospel forced itself into every home 
and into every country as it does now. This same name, 
Jesus, is just as dear this morning, just as bright, and 
even brighter than it ever was before; there are more souls 
to-day looking up to that holy, blessed name, than ever 
before. The world is beginning to find out that prayers 
without the name of Christ are all hypocritical ; the World 
is beginning to find out that without Jesus we can do 
nothing; the world is beginning to find out that the King 
of kings is after all the Babe of Bethlehem; that the 
Hand that rules the world is the Hand that was lying 
in the crib; that the One who guides the stars is the Star 
of Jacob visited by the Star of the East. 

There never has been a year in which we could be 
happier than in the coming year. I know there may be a 
great many things in store for us of which we never 
dreamed; there may be sorrows and sadness come over 
us that would overwhelm us, if we knew them this morn- 
ing. It is a good thing the Lord has kept the veil before 
our eyes; it is a good thing you and I do not know what 



NEW year's day. 115 

will happen the next hour. God knows, and that is suffi- 
cient. With all that, I declare on the basis of God's Holy 
Word, there never was a better year than the one coming. 
No brighter year did yet appear, is a Jewel from Jesus. 

The Alps are often above the clouds, and as we rise 
in faith in this Holy Name, we can rise above all the 
darkness that will come down this year. My Lord and 
my God has assured us that all things work together for 
good to them who love God. Let us then, on this first 
day of this year, love our God, and, no difference what 
happens, no difference what comes for you or for me, one 
thing is certain, it will be for our good, and being for our 
good, it shall be as bright a year as ever did appear. 

Of course, some of us may die in this year; I am sure 
that some will. For seventeen years I have prophesied 
in every New Year's sermon that some were listening to 
me who were listening to their last New Year's sermon, 
and I make that prophecy this morning; and, if every one 
of you were to record your name upon a book this morning, 
I will assure you that when the first of January, 1905, 
comes, some hands will not be here to record their names 
again. But, my dear friends, suppose death does come, 
has the valley ever been brighter? Has the river ever 
been smaller? Has the shore ever been nearer? Do you 
realize as you are sitting here this morning, how long 
Adam has waited for the resurrection, and you have not 
very long to wait? Have you realized that if Paul was 
correct when he said, "The day of the Lord is at hand," 
that it is so much nearer this morning than it has ever 
been before? Have you realized that the same God, for 
whose name the martyrs gave up their lives upon the 
funeral pyre, is still your God and your Savior? Therefore, 
even though we should pass into eternity this coming year, 
we will be so much nearer to the judgment, so much nearer 
to the gates of heaven, so much nearer to the final glory 
which God has prepared for His children. No brighter 
year did yet appear. 



116 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

IV. God does now see all that shall be. 

"And when eight days were accomplished for the cir- 
cumcising of the child, His name was called Jesus, which 
was so named of the angel before He was conceived in the 
womb." 

This child was not only named on the day of circum- 
cision, according to the custom of old; He did not receive 
His name after He was born, but He received His name 
long before He was born. We are told by Isaiah, almost 
a thousand years before He was born, that "His name 
shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, the Mighty God, the 
Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace." We were told 
by the angel before He was conceived, "His name shall 
be called Jesus, for He shall save His people from their 
sins," and in view of this prediction by the Lord our God, 
before He became man, I hold up this Jewel: God does now 
see all that shall be. 

He sees everything before it occurs. Oh, think of the 
big, broad past, of all that has taken place from this day 
back to the day of creation; and yet I again hold up to 
you this great fact, that He saw everything from all eter- 
nity. Time is only reckoned from the beginning of crea- 
tion until the end, but before there was a creation, be- 
fore the foundation of the world was laid, we were called 
in Christ. Think of it! The eye that saw all things be- 
fore they came to pass, that eye saw that this Child should 
be called Jesus before He was conceived — that is the 
eye that is going to rest over us in 1904 — that is the eye 
that shall rest over us in all eternity. 

What may happen from this day to the end of the 
world, no one knows but God only, but God not only knows 
it as it shall be, but He knows what shall be as if it had 
been; as He sees the past, so He sees the future, and I 
hold up to you this great Jewel that God does now see all 
that shall be to the end of time. 

The present — that brings us down to the time when 
you and I are living. From this day until the end of the 
year, we will constantly be thinking something, constantly 



new year's day. 117 

be saving something, constantly be doing something. As 
well as this day, the whole life, with all its thoughts, with 
all its words, with all its deeds, is seen by the eye that 
saw that Christ should be called Jesus before He was 
conceived. How safe we may be under that eye! What 
a lesson to teach our children! What a star to keep con- 
stantly before our eyes! What a comfort to know that 
all that has befallen, all that is befalling, all that shall 
befall, rests under the eye of God! These are the Jewels 
from Jesus. 

Roll on, then, wheels of time — 

Farewell the years gone past. 
The door of Ninteen-three 

Swing shut and lock it fast. 

The Word of God is here; 

The Savior's name I see. 
Up there are hills of joy 

For all — for you and me. 

What e'er we do this year — 

There rests on us God's eye 
To see the best for us, 

When years have all rolled by. — Amen. 



SUNDAY AFTER NEW YEAR. 



THE CHRIST-CHILD CROWNED. 



Matt. 2 : 13-23. 



HND when they were departed, behold the angel of the Lord ap- 
peareth to Joseph in a dream, saying, Arise, and take the young 
child and his mother, and flee into Egypt, and be thou there until 
1 bring thee word; for Herod will seek the young child to destroy Him. 
When he arose, he took the young child and His mother by night, and de- 
parted into Egypt; and was there until the death of Herod; that it might 
be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet, saying, 'Out of 
Egypt have I called my Son.' Then Herod, when he saw that he was 
mocked of the wise men, was exceeding wroth, and sent forth, and slew 
all the children that were in Bethlehem, and in all the coasts thereof, from 
two years old and under, according to the time which he had diligently in- 
quired of the wise men. Then was fulfilled that which was spoken by 
Jeremy,the prophet, saying: Tn Rama was there a voice heard, lamenta- 
tion, and weeping, and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children, 
and would not be comforted, because they are not.' But when Herod was 
dead, behold, an angel of the Lord appeareth in a dream to Joseph in 
Egypt, saying: 'Arise and take the young child and His mother, and go 
into the land of Israel; for they are dead which sought the young child's 
life.' And he arose, and took the young child and His mother, and- came 
into the land of Israel. But when he heard that Archelaus did reign in 
Judaea in the room of his father Herod, he was afraid to go thither; not- 
withstanding, being warned of God in a dream, he turned aside into the 
parts of Galilee : and he came and dwelt in a city called Nazareth : that it 
might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophets, He shall be called a 
Nazarene. 

Sanctify us, O Lord, through Thy truth; 
Thy Word is truth. Amen. 



Dearly beloved in Christ : — 

We are living in a strange world — a world that 
will spare nothing to crown men, and a world that 
will spend nothing to crown God. During the past 
week in this civilized land of ours, the papers have 

118 



SUNDAY AFTER NEW YEAR. 11!) 

been full — even of commendation, to a certain extent — 
giving us the picture of one man pounding another until 
the blood flowed, for f 25,000 a night. We know from the 
history of the past that the State of Ohio will not spare 
the money when it comes to inaugurate its Governor. The 
United States in the past decade at one time spent hun- 
dreds of thousands of dollars to inaugurate a President 
of the United States, when a panic was on the people, and 
millions of people were almost starving. In oriental coun- 
tries the people, who are living on black bread, are taxed 
nearly to death to crown monarchs who are born in fam- 
ilies where there are more idiots than truly well balanced 
minds. And yet, this same world, where millions are 
spent to crown monarchs, and to crown that which is 
purely Satanic at times — I say, this sinful world has not 
spent one cent to crown God. The truth of it is that the 
world, when it did crown Jesus, cut off a worthless thorn 
bush, and made a crown and put it on His head, to make 
it hurt, and the blood flowed; but in this world there is 
still the kingdom of God, and although the Son of God 
was born in Bethlehem and the world as such took no notice 
of Him, nevertheless He was crowned. I want to speak 
to you this morning of: 

THE CHRIST-CHILD CROWNED. 
I. 

Hell ignorantly croioned Him with jealousy; with hypoc- 
risy; with wrath; with murder; and with folly. 

1. The angel of the Lord appeared unto Joseph and 
said, "Herod will seek the young child, to destroy Him." 
Herod — a man who killed his own wife, and killed two 
of his own sons for fear they should come to the throne, 
had now in his heart a jealousy concerning the little Child 
at Bethlehem, and remember that jealousy itself, born of 
hell, was a proof that the Christ-child was really a king. 
Herod would never have been jealous of any one who he 
did not believe was a king. Physicians are only jealous 
of physicians; lawyers are only jealous of lawyers; 



120 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

preachers are only jealous of preachers; every profession 
is jealous of its own profession. The very fact that a king 
was jealous of Jesus Christ at Bethlehem, is an acknowl- 
edgement that hell itself has crowned Jesus Christ. 

Not only is it a fact that Jesus Christ was a king be- 
cause Herod was jealous of Him, but it is a fact that He 
was a greater king than Herod. No good law3^er is ever 
jealous of a poor lawyer; no good physician is ever jealous 
of a poor physician; no good preacher is ever jealous of a 
poor preacher; no good professional man is ever jealous 
of a poor professional man, of one that is under him, but 
hell has planted in the hearts of the people, even those 
who call themselves Christians, a feeling of jealousy of 
their superiors. The very fact that king Herod was jealous 
of Jesus Christ, is hell's crowning of a great king. 

2. Not only was He crowned with jealousy, but He 
was crowned with hypocrisy. When the wise men of the 
East came to Jerusalem to seek Jesus, Herod gave them 
the command that when they had found Him they should 
come back and report, so that he also might go and wor- 
ship Him. That is what he said, but not what he thought. 
You find in these very words the hypocrite thinking one 
thing and saying another. You may think that the fact 
that Herod wanted to go and pray to Christ is an evidence 
that hell had nothing to do with the jealousy, but I call 
your attention to the fact that hell is always prayerful. 
The rich man in hell was a prayerful man, not praying 
to the true and living God, but calling upon Abraham. 
The devil himself is a prayerful angel. The first thing 
he wanted Jesus Christ to do when he tempted Him, was 
to fall down and worship him. Satan knows of no bet- 
ter way of deluding the world than to come with a Bible 
under one arm, if it does not need to be opened — or to 
open the Bible, if you pick out only such things as say 
nothing about Jesus as the Savior of the world; he knows 
of no better way to delude the people than to have just 
as much religion as possible without Jesus Christ in it, 
and when we find Herod pretending to want to go down 
to Bethlehem to worship the little Christ-child, he is carry- 
ing out fully the spirit of the devil, and unconsciously and 



SUNDAY AFTER NEW YEAR. 121 

ignorantly is crowning Jesus as king. In his heart he 
meant something else. 

God knew what he meant and sent an angel swiftly 
to Bethlehem to tell the foster father and mother what 
that purpose was. "Herod will seek the young child to 
destroy Him." In other words, he pretended to pray, while 
in fact he intended to go to Bethlehem and strike dead 
the king. By hypocrisy, therefore, hell crowned Him as a 
king. 

3. Not only with hypocrisy, but also with wrath. "And 
when Herod saw T that he was mocked of the w T ise men, he 
was exceeding wroth." This word not only indicates that 
he was angry, but that he was raving with anger. What 
is there weaker in all the world than wrath? It is under- 
stood among public men that if they can get their oppo- 
nent angry, they have won the victory. Whenever any 
one loses his temper he has lost the battle. We find here 
the innocent King lying in the crib of Bethlehem, and 
the king up at Jerusalem raving. Having, why? Because 
the v/ise men of the East did not come back — raving be- 
cause they obeyed the angel from heaven rather than a 
jealous king, and by his raving he acknowledged that he 
was a weakling, that he was not so great as the little Child 
that sleeps in the little crib at Bethlehem. 

Not only did he acknowledge his weakness thereby, but 
acknowledged the strength of the little Child who sent 
the angel to give the message. Who was it that made the 
Star of the East break loose and come to Jerusalem? Who 
is the Child born down there? By his very wrath Herod 
acknowledged that down there lies a little Babe that is 
not only ruling Jerusalem, not only ruling the surround- 
ing country, but is ruling the stars of heaven, and the 
angels of heaven; in other w^ords, it is the God-man — 
Wonderful. 

4. Xot only did hell crown this Christ-child w r ith its 
wrath, but it crowned Him with its murder. 

"Then Herod, when he saw that he w T as mocked of the 
wise men, was exceeding wroth, and sent forth, and slew 
all the children that were in Bethlehem, and in all the 
coasts thereof, from two years old and under, accord- 



122 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

ing to the time which he had diligently inquired of the 
wise men. Then was fulfilled that which was spoken by 
Jeremy the prophet, saying, 'In Rama was there a voice 
heard, lamentation, and weeping, and great mourning, 
Rachel weeping for her children, and would not be com- 
forted because they are not. 7 " 

Herod in that act showed that he was a true instru- 
ment of hell. The Lord Jesus Christ, in the 8th chapter 
of John, in the 44th verse, speaking to the Pharisees, says: 
"Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your 
father ye will do. He was a murderer from the begin- 
ning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth 
in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own; 
for he is a liar and the father of it. And because I tell 
you the truth, ye believe me not." Talk about plain preach- 
ing — the Lord Jesus Christ called a fool a fool, a liar a 
liar, and a murderer a murderer, and that is just what the 
people need to-day. People are perfectly willing to be 
told that they make mistakes, and that this and that 
was not just exactly right, but when you tell them they 
are liars it makes them angry, and yet they have not told 
the truth. What are they? When a man does not tell 
the truth he is a liar. When a man loves lying more than 
the truth he is like his father the devil; like Herod, he 
is a murderer, like hell itself. And so we find that this 
representative of hell, this man that had taken the life 
of his own wife, who had murdered his two sons, was 
now ready to stretch forth his murderous hand and take 
the life of the little King Jesus — but the King escaped. 
In other words, there was a child in Bethlehem that even 
a representative of hell could not take His life at that 
time, though he was willing to sacrifice the lives of many 
others. 

And he did so. He gave out a command that every 
child below two years of age belonging to the male sex, 
should be killed. He drew the old serpent's coil around 
Bethlehem and the surrounding country, and drew that coil 
tighter and tighter, until every child was crushed, and 
every mother's wailing went up from house to house, and 
from district to district, until it traveled past Jerusalem, and 



SUNDAY AFTER NEW YEAR. L23 

on north, mile after mile, until the seven miles were reached, 
and up at Kama they heard the awful wail of the poor 
mothers in and around Bethlehem, crying for their dear 
little boys, all crushed to death, by a man of hell — Herod, 
the murderer, and yet that very murder was the crowning 
of hell of the little Christ-child. 

My dear friends, this old murderer is not done with 
his work. It seems to me if there ever was a time when 
this same story seemed at least in one way to be repeated, 
it has been repeated in Chicago during the past week. I 
am not here this morning to say that those fifteen hun- 
dred people who went to the theater in Chicago were any 
worse than the people of Mansfield — the only trouble with 
some is: they are sorry they were not there, if it had not 
been for the fire and death which followed. We are taught 
from the Word of God respecting the tower that fell upon 
those eighteen at Siloam — that those eighteen men were 
no worse sinners than others. It would be a mistake to 
think that those innocent little children of Chicago were 
any w r orse children than ours, or any worse than the 
members of the First Lutheran Church at Mansfield; but 
if you seem to think that it was simply an accident, that God 
had no control over it, or if you think that catastrophe 
took place and the devil had nothing to do with it, you 
are blind to the truth. The fact is that the people of Tyre 
and Sidon were no more wicked than were many other 
people; the people of Sodom and Gomorrah were no worse 
than those at other places, but there are times when 
Satan sets his trap and does it through the ignorance or 
wickedness of sinful men, and brings about an awful ca- 
tastrophe, and the Lord our God allows it to be brought 
about that the world may stop and think; wl^en words 
will do no good any more, sometimes a crushed babe will, 
and some of you people will never listen to God's Word 
until God Almighty allows Satan to come into your home 
and crush to death before your face one of your dear ones 
— then your eyes will be opened and you will see that 
there is still a God in heaven, and still a Satan in hell 
who by his damnable deeds is not destroying God, but 
simply crowning Him as King. 



124: THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

Do not imagine for a single moment that this great 
calamity in Bethlehem was the only one in the history of 
the world. The wail at that time went from Bethlehem, 
past Jerusalem, away up to Rama, seven miles away, and 
it seemed to the people as if Rachel had come out of her 
grave, as if they heard her wailing again for those that 
are not. During the past week the wail has not only gone 
seven miles, it has gone thousands of miles from Chicago, 
it has gone to San Francisco, it has been heard in New 
York, it has been heard in London, and all over the world 
they are hearing the moaning and the groaning of hun- 
dreds of mothers, who yesterday and to-day are looking 
upon their dead babes. The physicians are not men who 
usually tell everything, and it is not well that they should, 
but if the half is true which they do tell us, and the truth 
of it is that many of them are afraid of the law and do, 
not tell one-tenth of all the truth, I say that if what they 
tell us is true, there is the old murderer going around, 
not only in Chicago, not only in Bethlehem, but he is go- 
ing around in every city, and he is going around in homes 
that are even called Christian, and crushing one little in- 
fant after the other, and the old Satan knows very well 
that if he can do this — put a murderer in every home in- 
stead of a Christian mother, that the whole victory is his, 
and that the world is being crushed, and the cry is not 
going from Bethlehem to Bama, it is not going from Chi- 
cago to New York, but there is a cry which started in 
Paris, and then went up from New England, and to-day 
from all over the world a cry is heard to heaven, and the 
babes are being crushed; and all this proves after all, my 
friends, that Christ is crowned. He said these things would 
come to pass. 

5. Hell's plans were well laid to murder the Christ- 
child. Of course, the wise men would report to Herod 
and then he could carry out his shrewdly-laid scheme. If 
the wise men should fail to report, the murder of all the 
children below two years of age would surely not let the 
Christ-child escape! But hell rages and heaven reigns. 
The angels of God thwarted Herod's plans, and by his folly 
the Christ-child was crowned. What folly on the part of 



SUNDAY AFTER NEW YEAR. L25 

Herod! If Jesus was only a helpless babe, why kill Him? 
If He was the Son of God, why try to kill Him before lie 
was readv to be sacrificed? The most unreasonable thing 
in this world to-day is Satanic rationalism. 

II. 

Thanks be to God this Child has not only been crowned 
by hell ignorantly, but gloriously by heaven. 

1. The little Christ-child was crowned with prophecies 
plain and obscure. There are some very plain prophecies 
about this child. I read to you a portion of the second 
Psalm: "Why do the heathen rage, and the people imagine 
a vain thing? The kings of the earth set themselves, and 
the rulers take counsel together, against the Lord, and 
His annointed, saying: Let us break their bands asunder 
and cast away their cords from us. He that sitteth in 
the heavens shall laugh; the Lord shall have them in de- 
rision. Then shall He speak unto them in His wrath, and 
vex them in His sore displeasure. Yet have I set my 
King upon my holy hill of Zion." 

The Lord after all has crowned Himself as king in the 
plainest prophecies, and also in some that are obscure. 
We have a number of references in the lesson to-day to 
certain prophecies that were fulfilled, and when you turn 
back to the Old Testament you may have some difficulty, 
in finding them. One prophecy claimed to have been ful- 
filled is that "Out of Egypt have I called my Son," and 
yet you can look through the Old Testament, and you 
cannot find that prophecy in those words. A further 
prophecy in this: 4, He shall be called a Nazarene," and 
vet von mav look through the Old Testament and you can 
not find that prophecy in just those words, but, on the 
other hand, you can find in Hosea that as the children 
of Israel were in Egypt and led to Canaan, so the promised 
king shall go down to Egypt. You can find in the Old 
Testament that the Lord Jesus Christ shall be called "a re- 
proach," and we do know that in Xazareth, from which no 
good thing can come, every one was called "a reproach/ 
and that therefore not a single prophet, but all the prophets 



126 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

do say that He shall be called a reproach, or, in plain 
words, a Nazarene. 

2. If even those obscure prophecies had to be fulfilled 
to the letter, notice that heaven has crowned Jesus as 
king, not only with prophecies, but also ivith angels. When 
the Lord Jesus Christ w r as to be announced to the world, 
an angel came to Nazareth, to the very place where the 
little child was afterwards to live, and told Mary that she 
should conceive and bring forth a Son, and His name 
should be called Jesus, and He should save His people 
from their sins, and right there an angel crowned the 
Christ-child before He was conceived. Again in our les- 
son here we learn that when the Child was born, an angel 
came to Joseph one night and told him to flee to Egypt, 
take the Child and His mother and stay there until I come, 
— as much as to say, "Now look at me, I am an angel of 
the Lord; I want you to listen to no one but myself; you 
go to Egypt and stay there until you see me again; then 
I will tell you when to come home" — and that angel 
crowned Him there as king. When the Christ was born 
an angel stood before the shepherds and announced His 
coming first, and that angel crowned Him as king. 

Not only was He crowned by single angels, but also 
by the heavenly host. That night when Herod was jealous 
of the little Christ-child at Bethlehem, or possibly in total 
ignorance, the angelic host with a multitude came and 
overshadowed the plain and overshadowed the crib in 
which Jesus lay, and there, with angelic wings, as they 
sang and sang "Glory to God in the highest, on earth 
peace, good will toward men," they crowned the Christ- 
child. 

3. Not only was the Christ-child crowned with Angels, 
but heaven crowned this Christ-child with Stars. If you 
will go back to the Book of Numbers you will find that 
there w T as a prophecy that the Star of Jacob should ap- 
pear, the Scepter of Israel. You will find when the wise 
men from the East came they had been looking for a star. 
Why were they looking for a star? Because in times past 
Daniel had been a captive down there; he was a man of 
God; he told them about that Star of Jacob and those wise 



SUNDAY AFTER NEW YEAR. 127 

men were watching for that star, and one day they saw 
a star move as they never saw one move before; they left 
their work and followed it until they came to Jerusalem, 
and there they lost the star, as we shall hear next Sun- 
day ; then they knew not what to do but to go to 'God's 
Word and find out where the Christ should be born; Herod 
sent his priests and Levites and men of God to search, and 
they looked in the Book of Micah, and they found that 
He should be born in Bethlehem. Herod told them to 
come and report, and lo, the star appeared, and that star 
went on from Jerusalem down to Bethlehem and stood 
over the crib, and crowned Him, the Christ-child, as king. 

When the angel came and told Joseph that there was 
danger, that the jealous king up in Jerusalem was seek- 
ing the life of the child, he said, "Flee for your life, 
go to Egypt," Joseph did not wait until morning; that 
very night he arose and took the young child and His 
mother by night and departed into Egypt. That very night 
he arose, and when they went out of the stable and walked 
down the road toward Egypt, the starry canopy of heaven 
was the crown, the starry crown, with all its golden jewels, 
over the Christ-child. 

4. Heaven also crowned the Christ-child with precious 
and timely gifts. Like the Queen of Sheba, who gave Solomon 
nearly three million dollars as a gift, the wise men of the 
East brought precious gifts to the King of heaven. How 
timely that gold was for poor Joseph and Mary, who had 
to flee to Egypt and stay there probably one year until 
Herod died a cursed death. Who cannot see God's hand 
in those gifts? He who afterwards expected to teach us 
to pray: "Give us this day our daily bread," was the same 
little king who already made provision for His poor par- 
ents who were to care for Him without begging, though 
driven further away from home. 

5. He was not only crowned with Stars, but heaven 
crowned Him with Little Martyrs. There are three kinds 
of martyrs in history, (a) Martyrs in will, but not in fact. 
There are men of God to-day who are sacrificing their very 
lives for the Lord Jesus Christ — men who might have 
made fortunes in other professions have been willing to go 



128 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

down into the deserts, and go down into the darkness 
of heathendom, and there, in the burning fevers, in a few 
months, have been willing to die that the world might 
hear of Jesus — like Doctor Luther and others who were 
willing to die for Jesus Christ in the fires, but God per- 
mitted them to live until death came in its natural way 
— nevertheless they are all martyrs — martyrs in will, but 
not in fact, (b) Then, again, before that there was a time 
when there were martyrs in will and in fact. If you study 
history from the first century up to the fourth, you will 
discover there were no fewer than one hundred and eighty- 
five millions of people, for the sake of the little Christ- 
child, — who allowed their limbs to be torn asunder — who 
allowed themselves to be covered with skins of wild ani- 
mals and thrown to the angry lions — willing to be dipped 
into the burning tar — willing to give up their lives, and 
they did give them up, in will and in fact, for the Lord 
Jesus Christ. 

(c) There is still another kind of martyrs, not those who 
have been martyrs in will and not in fact, not those who 
have been martyrs in will and in fact, but there have been 
marytrs in fact and not in will. Such martyrs are the little 
infants, the little holy innocents who have laid down their 
lives for the Lord Jesus Christ, and it does my soul good 
this morning, dear little children — listen to me — it does 
my soul good to know that the first ones who laid down their 
lives for Jesus Christ were little babes below two years 
of age. When this edict went out that all the boys below 
the age of two years should be slaughtered, in order that 
the Christ-child might not be missed, hell did not know, 
Herod did not recognize that thereby he was helping to 
crown the Lord Jesus Christ as king. They were His first 
martyrs, these innocent little infants, that laid down their 
lives for their Master, and to-day I see them as a crown 
of my Lord and Master, Jesus Christ. 

I told you in the beginning, my friends, that the world 
never had any other crown except the crown of thorns 
for the Master, but let me call your attention in conclu- 
sion to this fact, that just before the Lord Jesus Christ 
put on the thorny crown He instituted the Holy Supper, to 



SUNDAY AFTER NEW YEAR. 129 

which He invites you this morning, aud in this Supper, 
His last will, He laid down in plain terms this great truth 
that the very blood that shall be shed for the remission 
of sins is to be given to you; that the very body that hung 
on Calvary's hill shall be given to you. In other words, 
that if little infants are going to give their lives for the 
Master, the Master is going to give His life for you and 
me, and by the giving of that life He has redeemed us, 
and by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ we accept Him, and 
in the Holy Supper He gives Himself to us, as He says, 
"Take eat, this is My body," and, "Take, drink, this is my 
blood," and He invites all those who believe this to come 
and partake, and those w T ho do not to stay away, for it 
would be condemnation to their souls. 

Do you understand that invitation? That is God's in- 
vitation, and it is the only one that a man of God has a 
right to give. I am not here, my friends, to apologize for 
the doctrine of the Lutheran Church. It cannot be changed 
until God Almighty changes that Bible. It stands. And 
now, in God's Holy Name, let us prepare well to come to 
His Supper, not as self-righteous people, but as poor sin- 
ners desiring forgiveness, loving our fellow-men and loving 
our God, with the full intention to live nearer and nearer 
to our God as death is growing nearer, as the judgment is 
coming nearer, as one family we shall draw near to the 
throne on high. Amen. 

PRAYER. 

O Lord, our God, in the name of the crowned Christ-child, we come 
to Thee in this morning hour, thankful for Thy Providence, which not only 
governs all good but overrules all evil; we thank Thee that in this sin- 
cursed world, that which is born of flesh, has been regenerated by Thy means 
of grace, so that we can faithfully look up to Thee, and call upon Thee as 
our Lord and our Master, and thankfully receive from Thee the means of 
grace which are here in their fulness and purity. We pray Thee, Heavenly 
Father, that Thou wilt now especially prepare us for the coming celebra- 
tion of Thy most Holy Supper; help us to examine ourselves in the light 
of Thy Holy Word and see whether we are true to our brethren, whether 
we love them, and whether we can come here believing Thy Truth as Thou 
hast revealed it in the words of institution. We pray Thee, Heavenly Father, 
that Thou wilt also be with them who would so dearly love to be with us 
to-day, and cannot; we pray Thee that Thou wilt give them a sweet com- 
munion in their own homes. All these favors we ask in the name of the 
Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen. 
9 



EPIPHANY. 



HOW HEATHEN REACH HEAVEN. 



N 



Matt. 2: 1-12. 

^^JOW when Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judaea in the days of 
Herod the king, behold, there came wise men from the East to 
Jerusalem, saying, 'Where is He that was born King of the Jews? 
for we have seen His star in the East, and are come to worship Him.' 
When Herod the king had heard these things, he was troubled, and all 
Jerusalem with him. And when he had gathered all the chief priests and 
scribes of the people together, he demanded of them where Christ should 
be born. And they said unto him, In Bethlehem of Judaea: for thus it is 
written by the prophet, 'And thou Bethlehem, in the land of Judaea, art 
not the least among the prophets of Juda, for out of thee shall come a Gov 
ernor, that shall rule My people Israel." Then Herod, when he had priv- 
ily called the wise men, inquired of them diligently what time the star ap- 
peared. And he sent them to Bethlehem and said, 'Go and search diligently 
for the young child, and when ye have found Him bring me word again, 
that I may come and worship Him also.' When they had heard the king 
they departed, and lo, the star which they saw in the East, went before them, 
till it came and stood over where the young child was. When they saw 
the star they rejoiced with exceeding great joy. And when they wer.e come 
into the house, they saw the young child with Mary His mother, and fell 
down, and worshipped Him ; and when they had opened their treasures, 
they presented unto Him gifts ; gold, frankincense, and myrrh. And being 
warned of God in a dream that they should not return to Herod, they de- 
parted into their own country another way." 

Sanctify us, O Lord, through Thy truth; 
Thy word is truth. Amen. 



Beloved in Christ : — 

There are two Epiphanies and two errors among the 
people. 

1. When the Lord Jesus Christ was born in the crib 
of Bethlehem, that was the first Epiphany, or manifesta- 
tion of Christ to Israel. In the lesson we have before us 

130 



EPIPHANY. 131 

this morning, we have the second Epiphany, or manifesta- 
tion of Christ to the heathen. In other words, this is called 
the Heathen's Christmas. The Savior is barely born until 
His message came to the wise men who came from heathen 
lands, showing that He was not only to save Israel, but to 
save the world. 

2. There are two common errors among the people. 
One is that in some way or other the heathen w T ill be saved 
whether they hear of Christ or not; and the other is that 
Christians will be saved whether they take the Gospel to 
the heathen or not. 

I believe that both of these are errors. The Lord has 
assured us that there is no other name under heaven where- 
by men may be saved but the name of Jesus. Christ Himself 
said, "I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life; no man 
cometh unto the Father but by Me." If the heathen are 
ever to be saved, they must hear of Jesus, and in my own 
heart I do believe that the Lord God will not let any heathen 
perish without, in some way, bringing him the light, and 
there is a reason in God's Word for believing this. We 
learn in the first chapter of John that Jesus is the Light 
that lighteth every man that cometh into the world, and if 
we, as Christian people fail to bring that light to the hea- 
then, surely God will hold us responsible. 

I want to tell you to-day 



and may the Holy Spirit write this lesson deep in all our 
hearts. 

I. He sees to it that missionaries are sent to them. 

These wise men from the East came to seek the newly 
born King. How did they know that a king should be 
born? Where did they find it out? Where did they come 
from? From the East? New York is east of us; we are 
east of San Francisco, and San Francisco is east of the 
islands of the Pacific; there is no place on earth that is 
not the East; There is no place on earth that is not the 
West, and yet, when we remember that the Lord Jesus Christ 



132 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

was born in Bethlehem, and these heathen came from the 
East, we do know that they came from somewhere in the 
far East, — possibly Persia, and possibly further yet. How 
did they know that a king should be born? Where did they 
find it out? These wise men were not simply a new organ- 
ization. We read away back in Daniel 2:48 that when Is- 
rael was taken captive down to Babylon, that Daniel him- 
self was the chief governor of the wise men, and you will 
remember that Daniel told the people of Babylon how many 
weeks it would be until Jesus would be born. If the people 
heard that, surely he would not keep back from his organi- 
zation, of which he was the chairman and the ruler, the 
great fact that a Star of Jacob should appear; he would 
not keep back the great fact that the Jews were looking for 
a king who should be the Messiah, and that truth went on 
from generation to generation, so that over half a thousand 
years afterwards the wise men had not forgotten what 
Daniel had told them. The very first thing, then, that God 
did to bring these wise men to the Lord Jesus Christ, was 
to send them a Daniel, even though he had to be a prisoner 
to go there. 

My friends, the same Lord God has been sending mis- 
sionaries out into the world ever since; the same Lord God 
left His command, "Go ye into all the world and preach 
the Gospel to every creature." That command stands to- 
day. Are we going to obey, or are we going to sit down 
in worldliness and idleness and not obey? 

II. He brings them and the Word together. 

The second thing that the Lord will do to help the 
heathen to reach heaven, is to bring them and the Word of 
God together. 

I do not know, nor do you know, where these wise men 
came from, but one thing is certain, the message that Daniel 
left in the far East, and these wise men, though separated 
over half a thousand years, and possibly a thousand miles, 
in some way or other were brought together. We learn it 
not only from the fact that they started with that knowl- 
edge, but we learn it furthermore from the fact that the 



EPIPHANY. 133 

Lord God saw to it that they never saw Jesus Christ until 
they were first brought face to face with the Word of God. 
When they started to follow the star, they undoubtedly 
thought the star was going right on to the crib of Bethle- 
hem. YVe are told by scientists that in about that year 
three great comets met, and in conjunction produced a new 
star. Whether this was occasioned by the conjunction of 
those great stars, or whether it was a newly created star 
for the purpose, I do not know, nor do I care. I know that 
the same Word that made the world could make a star to 
go to Bethlehem, and when those men followed that star, 
as I said before, they expected to find it leading them right 
to the Christ, but it did not. It led them to the city of 
Jerusalem, and there they lost it. Why did that star hide 
itself at Jerusalem? Why did it not go right on across to 
Bethlehem? My dear friends, the Lord God never intended 
that the people should find Christ by the stars; the Lord 
God never intended that the people should find Christ any 
other way except through the Word of God. Stars may 
help to lead us to the Bible, but they never can lead us to 
heaven. The Lord manifests Himself to us in His works 
and in His Word, but no man has ever been able to read in 
the works of God, who God is. I therefore repeat it, that 
nothing in God's works will ever lead us to heaven, but can 
only direct us to the Word. So that star of the East led 
the wise men up to Jerusalem, and up to Herod to ask the 
question, " Where is He that is born King of the Jews?" 
and Herod and all Jerusalem were stirred up; then they 
went to the Bible students and said, "What do the prophets 
say as to where Jesus shall be born?" and they began to 
read on through the prophets until they came to Micah. 5, 
and they discovered that Jesus was to be born just a few 
miles south of Jerusalem; they told the wise men, and lo! 
the star appeared. The star appeared just as soon as God 
had brought the heathen and the Word together; then they 
found Christ, and that is the way the Lord is going to show 
heathen to-day how to reach heaven, they and the Word 
must be brought together. 



134 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 



III. He starves their souls on earthly treasures. 

There seems to be a desire in the heart of the natural 
man to feed on wealth; to feed on the things of this world, 
and he tries it. He wants gold, and says, "If I had so 
much I would be satisfied." He gets it, and he is just as 
dissatisfied as ever. He says, "If I just had learning as 
some people have, I would be satisfied." He gets the learn- 
ing and he is just as dissatisfied as he was before. He 
thinks if he could just go somewhere else then he could 
find what he wanted; he goes and he is just as much dis- 
satisfied as before. So the Lord God takes men, as He 
did the wise men of the East, and gives them knowledge, 
but knowledge doesn't satisfy them; He gives them gold, 
but gold does not satisfy them; they are called usually 
the three kings of the East ; He gave them governorship, but 
all the fame did not satisfy the soul ; so the Lord God 
thoroughly starved them on earthly treasures in order that 
He might lead them toward heaven. One of the very- first 
things that a heathen must get thoroughly tired of before 
he will start heavenward, is of earthly treasures ; they never 
can satisfy the immortal soul. 

IV. He gives His message convincing power. 

The Lord God takes these heathen and He gives them a 
powerful message that impresses their souls. You will 
please notice that these wise men from the East had no 
doubt in their minds whatever. They did not come to the 
city of Jerusalem and say, "Haven't you seen the star?" 
They did not say, "Is the Savior soon to be born?" 
or, "Has He been born?" or "Will He be born?" "Where 
is He?" "Haven't you seen Him yet?" No questions like 
these. There is only one question they want answered: 
"Where is He that is bom King of the Jews?" How did 
these men satisfy their own souls that Jesus was born? 
The Lord God took His calling and united it with their 
calling, and thoroughly convinced them that His message 
was true. If you will notice the Lord's doings closely in 
the Bible, you will find that He always comes down to man's 



EPIPHANY. 135 

own calling and convinces him through it. Do you remem- 
ber the story of Joshua when he was about to enter Canaan 
to tight the battle for the possession of that land? That 
night the Lord met him — met him how? The soldier was 
met by the Lord as a soldier. Do you remember the story 
of Jacob coming home to meet Esau, the enraged brother? 
He expected a fight. That night God came and wrestled 
with Jacob all night, You remember the fishermen along 
the Sea of Galilee? Christ wished to convince them that 
He was the Messiah, and told them to throw out their nets, 
and they had a draught of fishes that convinced them that 
none but God could fill that net as it was filled. There 
were the learned men in the temple. Jesus Christ con- 
vinced them He was the Messiah. How? By explaining the 
Scriptures. Here are the poor lepers — they must find the 
Savior. He comes down to their disease and heals them, 
and they accept Him as the Christ. Here are the wise men 
of the east, — astronomers — astrologers — star gazers — 
the Lord God comes down to them, and with that star con- 
vinces them that Christ is born, and there never was an- 
other doubt in their minds. He called them with their own 
calling, with a convincing power, that never gave them any 
rest until they started in search of the new-born King. 

V. He enlarges the reason to flood it with Revelation. 

He enlarges reason. I speak of this purposely because 
there are so many people in the world to-day who seem to 
think that reason is dethroned the moment you become a 
Christian. You remember that Dr. Luther, in his explana- 
tion of the third article of the Creed says, "I believe that 
I cannot, by my own reason or strength, believe in Jesus 
Christ, my Lord, or come to Him, but the Holy Ghost has 
called me by the Gospel, etc." 

Now, says the present age, "If I cannot come to the 
Lord Jesus Christ by my own reason, then I must dethrone 
reason to become a Christian." Brethren, that is not true. 
I will simply ask you the question, where is the most in- 
telligence in the world? Is it among the heathen, is it 
among infidels, or is it among the people of God? Who 



130 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

have written the good books of the world, — were they men 
who were children of God, or were they not? You all know 
the answer. The truth of it is that when you study God's 
Word and have the Word of God in you, you begin to en- 
lighten and to develop your reasoning power; but with all 
that, Christian people do know that revelation is not against 
reason, but above it. 

When the wise men came to Jerusalem, they did not 
lose their wisdom; they did not fail to use their reasoning 
power, and well might they have started back, had they 
depended only upon reason. Just think of it, my friends, 
that these wise men should come within three or four miles 
of where Jesus was born, after all their travel, and find 
that the people there at Jerusalem, among the people of 
God, did not know anything about Jesus; and even after 
they had searched the Scriptures and found out that He 
should be born in Bethlehem, not one of them said, "We 
will go along." If those men had depended simply upon 
their reason, they would have said, "Well, if the people 
of God do not care for the newly born King, why should 
we? If they are not enough interested to go three or four 
miles to hunt Him, why should we? Let us turn back; let 
us go home again." No, they did not go home. Why? 
Because the Lord God first enlarged their reason and then 
flooded their reason with Revelation. He made them large, 
and Revelation larger, and when they found out that the 
fifth chapter of Micah told them what they had learned 
for five hundred years back in the East, that there should 
be a Savior born in Bethlehem, they were so thoroughly 
convinced that they said, "Now we are going" — reason 
flooded with Revelation — "We will obey the voice of God; 
we will go and find our Savior." 

VI. He combines all forces at last to unburden them. 

The last thing that God did before He brought them 
to Bethlehem, was to combine all His powers to unburden 
them. In that beautiful allegory of Pilgrim's Progress, we 
have Christian pictured with a large bundle on his back, 
growing very weary and tired as he beholds a hill and a 



EPIPHANY. i:JT 

narrow road, on either side a large wall, on top a cross, 
and down at the bottom a large grave open, and as he comes 
to that hill the burden seems so heavy, but he manages lo 
go up, and all at once the burden falls off of his back, as 
he stands before the cross, and it rolls down the hill into 
the sepulcher, and he finds it no more. There you have a 
perfect picture of the wise men of the East, with that 
awful burden resting upon them, as they go to Jerusalem 
and find so little interest in their only Savior, but it was 
not long until it seemed as if God stretched out every power 
and force to bring them down to the new born King. Back 
of them stands the hill upon which Jesus shall die. Oh, 
my dear friends, before the heathen can reach heaven, they 
must come to the cross. It was no mistake for the star of 
the East to come around by Jerusalem and lead them across 
the hill where their Savior should die for them. It was 
not a mistake for the Lord God to put the cross behind 
them and the crib before them. As soon as they had found 
out in Kevelation where Jesus should be born, there was 
a light in their hearts, and a light above, and lo! the star 
appeared. With light inside of them and light above them, 
with the cross back of them and the crib before them, with 
all the powers of God thrown around them, they bent their 
knees before the Savior of the world, and they unburdened 
their gold, and frankincense and myrrh; and, unburdened, 
like the pilgrim before the cross, the burden falls off, and 
rolls into the sepulcher and is lost, because when the wise 
men w T ere saved, they came to Christ by all the powers that 
God could draw them with, and I would say to you this 
morning, that if there ever was a time when God seemed to 
have been using all His powers from above and from be- 
low, from all sides, to bring the people to God, it is now. 
How can a man, in this civilized world, in this world of 
Bibles, in this world of churches, in this w 7 orld of godly 
men and w^omen, in this world of godly fathers and godly 
mothers, stay back much longer? It does seem to me that 
in the last years of the world, in the last years of the 
Christian Church on earth, all the forces are combining to 
draw men heavenward. 



138 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 



VII. Fe finally leads them His own way. 

The last thing that Herod said to these wise men was 
that they should search diligently for the Child, and when 
they had found Him they should come back and tell him 
that he also might go and worship Him. God knew that 
the hypocrite was lying. The heathen who wants to go to 
heaven is not to go the way he came. So God warned these 
wise men in a dream to go home another way, and they 
went home the way that God had told them to go, and I am 
sure to-day that they are at home with their God. They 
ivent His ivay. There are some people who are still living 
in the same Avay they came, — born in sin, they are living 
in sin, and it will not be very long until they will be in 
eternity, and they are expecting to go home the way they 
came, and if they do, they will go to hell, and that is all 
there is about it. No man can go back the way he came 
and reach heaven. The Lord God showed these wise men 
from the East that just because they were wise they should 
obey, and because He gave the command they should go 
home His way, and they went, and Herod never saw them, 
but they went home to heaven, and Herod undoubtedly was 
lost. And so I come to you all to-day with this message: 
Go home — home in your missionary work — home in your 
daily labors; go home to your God, and go the way He has 
selected for you. "I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life; 
no man cometh to the Father but by Me," says Jesus the 
only Savior of the world. 

The Christian without missions, 

The heathen without Jesus, 
They both in sins will perish — 

This may or may not please us. 

Christ came His light to offer 

To souls before they are lost, 
If Daniels must be prisoners 

And tell it at any cost. 



EPIPHANY. L39 

The Word must reach the heathen 

And they God's Book first must find, 
If night must turn to light and 

And star lead them on behind. 

"Where is the King?" — The heathen 

To all Christians now cry out — 
The Word ! the Word ! ! the Word they 

Must have ! ! ! some will never doubt. 

No mine so deep, or barn full, 

The soul will learn in God's school, 
Can satisfy its longing — 

God called a rich man "Fool." 

When sea shells dip oceans dry 

And waters flames to fire lend, 
Then Faith may go, and Reason 
• Revelation comprehend. 

Within, without, above and 

Below, God's forces all meet 
To help the souls of heathen 

To worship at Jesus' feet. 

When there they find salvation 

And thanks pours out gold, its best; 
They take His way, and homeward 

They go to eternal rest. 
Amen. 



FIRST SUNDAY AFTER EPIPHANY. 



THE LOST LORD. 



jSf 



Luke 2 : 41-52. 

*♦ f^fOW His parents went to Jerusalem every year at the feast of the 
Passover. And when He was twelve years old, they went up to 
Jerusalem after the custom of the feast. And when they had 
fulfilled the days, as they returned, the child Jesus tarried behind in Jeru- 
salem; and Joseph and His mother knew not of it. But they, supposing 
Him to have been in the company, went a day's journey; and they sought 
Him among their kinsfolk and acquaintance. And when, they found Him not 
they turned back again to Jerusalem, seeking Him. And it came to pass 
that after three days they found Him in the temple, sitting in the midst of 
the doctors, both hearing them, and asking them questions. And all that 
heard Him were astonished at His understanding and answers. And when 
they saw Him they were c.mazed ; and _His mother said unto Him, "Son, 
why hast Thou thus dealt with us? behold, Thy father and I have sought 
Thee sorrowing.' and He said unto them, 'How is it that ye sought Me? 
wist ye not that I must be about My Father's business?' And they under- 
stood not the saying which He spake unto them. And he went down with 
them, and came to Nazareth, and was subject unto them; but His mother 
kept all these sayings in her heart. And Jesus increased in wisdom and 
stature, and in favor with God and man." 

Sanctify us, O Lord, through Thy truth — 
Thy Word is truth. Amen. 



Dearly beloved in Christ : — 

To write the history of the whole world in one 
Book, necessarily demanded brevity. We have heard 
recently the song of the holy angels when Jesus was 
born; we have heard of the Gentiles' Christmas, 
when the wise men came from the East; we have heard 
of the presentation of the Savior in the temple, and from 
that time until His twelfth year we hear nothing; and, 

140 



FIRST SUNDAY AFTER EPIPHANY. 141 

again, we hear nothing from His twelfth year until His 
thirtieth, and some people might wonder why it was that 
God said so little about the life of Christ in the first 
twelve years, and the eighteen that followed the twelve; 
but let us not forget that the Bible was not given to us 
to tell us anything that was unnecessary, nor to keep 
back anything we must know. The Bible is that wonder- 
ful Book that reveals to us what we must know, and keeps 
nothing back that we should know. It is enough for you and 
me to know that Jesus was born; that He was circum- 
cizecl; that at the age of twelve He was engaged in His 
Father's business; that He began His ministry at the 
age of thirty, and was faithful until death, and laid down 
His life at the cross, and rose again, and ascended to 
heaven and sitteth at the right hand of God the Father 
Almighty; from thence he shall come to judge the quick 
and the dead. That is all that you and I need to know 
at the present time. It certainly will be of interest to 
us, however, who are by nature lost, to hear something this 
morning about: 

THE LOST LORD. 

May the Holy Spirit impress this thought on our hearts, 
that none of us may be lost. Notice then, 

I. How He lost Himself. 
II. How we may lose Him. 
III. How He may lose us. 

I. How the Lord lost Himself. 

According to the custom of the Jews, His parents took 
Jesus and went to the Passover. Three times a year, ac- 
cording to the Old Testament Scriptures, they went to 
the great festivals — the one festival, the greatest of all, 
being the Passover. When His parents arrived there and 
spent seven days at the great Passover and went home 
again, Jesus did not go with them, because He had lost 
Himself in His Word, in His death, and in His obedience. 



142 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

1. He lost Himself in His Word. You will remember 
that at the age of twelve every son of Israel was asked 
to put himself under the law and become a student, or a 
son of the law. Not in the sense, dear friends, that He 
had not been under the law before, but just as our infant 
children are baptized, and at the age of fourteen or about 
that age, are supposed to make an open confession and 
ratify that acceptance of holy baptism, just so in Israel 
the little children circumcised, at the age of twelve were 
supposed to become sons of the law. The Lord Jesus Christ 
was among the doctors. They were studying that old 
Word of God, and that Word of God was more interesting 
to Him than Nazareth — more interesting to Him than all 
the scenes in the holy city of Jerusalem — nothing in all 
the world so interesting to Him as the Word of God — and 
there He lost Himself in that Word. 

Not only in the Word, but in His Messiahship as well. 
Those learned doctors hearing this boy at the age of twelve 
were utterly astonished. They heard things they never 
understood before; there was something about that twelve- 
year-old Boy that made them feel that they were the pupils 
and He was the teacher. The consequence was that they 
not only asked questions of Him, but He asked questions, 
and they answered. They were so astonished that they 
recognized they were in the presence, not only of the Boy 
from Nazareth, but in the presence of the Son of God. You 
will remember the prophet said "He shall be called Won- 
derful." He was not only wonderful when He was born, 
but He was wonderful at the age of twelve, standing in 
the temple. The old Word of God that made the sun, 
moon and stars — the old Word of God that called all 
creation into existence, now in a Boy twelve years old, 
astonished the Doctors of Divinity — lost in that Word 
of Messiahship. 

2. He was not only lost in His Word, but He was lost 
also in His own death. Kemember, my friends, what the 
Passover was. Let us go back into history. Kemember 
that man at the age of seventy-five who was called to 
become a Father of nations — Abraham ; remember how 
that man waited for twenty-five years before his first son 



FIRST SUNDAY AFTER EPIPHANY. 1 L3 

was born; remember how God promised to that man that 
he should be the father of nations, and that his seed should 
be as the sands of the sea and as the stars of heaven; re- 
member that in time there was born to that man a son 
— Isaac- — and to that son another one, called Jacob, and 
to Jacob twelve sons, who were the children of Israel; re- 
member, my friends, that a great people was coming on, 
and yet no land, no home, for them. Down to Egypt they 
were taken as prisoners; there the hand of Pharaoh was 
lying upon them, crushed with tyranny from day to day 
they cried until Pharaoh said, "I will crush this nation's 
power; every male child must be killed." The Lord Jesus 
Christ had not forgotten at the age of twelve, how the 
hand of Herod had killed the little children at Bethlehem, 
and that day was lost in the old massacre down in Egypt 
when the male children were killed, and it was the pur- 
pose of Pharaoh, that other representative of hell, to crush 
out the powerful nation of Israel. But the good Lord's 
ways are not our ways. He can make a nation be born 
out of a barren woman — Sarah; He can make a nation 
out of boys that are to be killed, and the result is that He 
takes one boy out of the number to be murdered and buries 
him in the Xile until a daughter of Pharoah picks him up 
and raises up the giant — the moral giant, Moses, who be- 
comes the ruler to lead Israel out of tyranny. The day 
comes — Moses did not know of his greatness — when he and 
Aaron step up before the mighty king and say, "Let my 
people go. The Lord hath said it." But proud Pharoah 
said, "I want you to understand that I am your lord. The 
trouble with you is that you are lazy. Go and do twice 
as much work as you ever did before." They come back 
again and say, "The Lord hath said, 'Let my people go.' " 
But Pharaoh said, "I will show you who I am; I will let 
you know that I am your lord," but it was not very long 
before the Lord from heaven let Pharaoh know who He 
was. One plague after another — the dust turned into 
lice; the frogs leaped up into king Pharaoh's house and 
into his dough-tray; the water was turned to blood; and 
while the hand of the great God of heaven was upon him 
he would cry out, "I will let them go," and the very 



144 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

moment that God's hand was off of him, his heart got 
hard and he said, "I will not let them go." The world 
was turned into darkness for three days and three nights; 
the hail fell; the storms raged; the cattle and the people 
were filled with loathsome disease, and the king said, "I 
will let them go," as long as God's hand was upon him, 
and the moment He took it off: he said, "I will not let 
them go." At last God said, "People, get ready; kill a 
little lamb that is perfect, one year of age, every family, 
and eat, and take the blood and put it on the door-post and 
over the door, and that night I will come and will pass 
over Egypt, and wherever I do not find the blood I will 
kill the first-born, whether it is an animal, whether it is 
a little^child, whether it is a father, whether it is a mother, 
or a grandfather, or a grandmother. I will show Pharaoh 
who God is." That night the perfect lamb was slain; 
the blood was put upon the door-post; the feast was ready; 
with staff in hand they were all ready to march, and they 
started for the Ked Sea, and the sea divided, and they 
passed over until they started for the land given to them, 
the land of Canaan; and that night Pharoah was drowned, 
with all his hosts, and God was King! And the Passover 
was celebrated every year, on that same night, until Christ 
instituted the Lord's Supper. The Lord Jesus Christ had 
just been to the Passover; He had not forgotten this old 
history, and He had not forgotten, furthermore, that those 
lambs were a type of the twelve-year-old child. 

He had not forgotten on that day to look backward, 
and forward. He did not fail among these doctors to re- 
member that as He was now lost three days from His 
parents, He would be lost three days from the world, in 
the grave. He did not forget that time in the temple, that 
as the old Passover was slain, so the Lamb of God, that 
taketh away the sins of the world, must be led up on Cal- 
vary's hill, and there be crowned with thorns, there bleed 
and die, and in the last hour of His death, this Lamb of 
God must not only die, but He would have to be damned 
to save the damned. If you, my dear Christian hearers, 
never believed it before, you must believe it on the au- 



FIRST SUNDAY AFTER EPIPHANY. L45 

tliority of God's Word to-day, that Jesus Christ was abso- 
lutely lost — lost as much as the rich man in hell, the 
moment He cried out on the cross, "My God! My God! 
Why hast Thou forsaken Me!" That was the cry of the Lost 
Lord, whose being lost in His twelfth year, to His parents, 
three days was typical of His death. 

3. He was not only lost in death, but He was also lost 
in obedience. We have in this text to-day the record of 
the first words that Jesus ever said. I do not say that 
they are the first words He did speak, but they are the 
first ones on record. After His mother had found Him 
in the temple she came to Him with a kind of accusation, 
"Why hast thou thus dealt with us?" His answer, how- 
ever, shows plainly that He had an obedience that was far 
above her understanding. "Wist ye not that I must be 
about My Father's business?" As much as to say, "Mary, 
your husband is not My father. Mary, you are only a 
woman. Mary, while you, as a virgin, gave birth to Me, 
I, as your Lord, brought you into existence. Mary, while 
you think that I have not treated you exactly as I should, 
I let you know to-day that I have a Father in heaven, whose 
business is far above yours; and that, therefore, I have 
been strictly in obedience with His will when I have been 
here in the temple, and while you thought I was lost from 
you, I w T ish you to understand that I was lost in My Father's 
business — lost in obdience to My Father in heaven; but 
in order that you may know that I respect the fourth 
commandment — in order that you may know that I w 7 ish 
to do you no harm, I am going down to Nazareth with 
you, and I will stay with you eighteen years longer, until 
I begin My Father's business in earnest, when I start for 
Calvary. Therefore, dear mother, I was lost — lost in 
obedience to my Father in heaven — lost in obedience 
to you and Joseph." And He went down with them and 
came to Nazareth, and was subject unto them, but His 
mother kept all these sayings in her heart. She did not 
understand them that day, but she believed them. 



10 



146 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

II. How we may lose Him. 

We may lose Him in several ways: by dividing our 
families, by depending upon others, by hunting Him where 
He cannot be found. 

1. We may lose our Lord by dividing our families. 
How does it come that Joseph and Mary lost their Boy? 
They had been to the Passover and started home. Joseph 
thought He might be with Mary; Mary thought He might 
be with Joseph, and after they discovered that He was 
with neither of them, they both thought He might be 
with some of their relatives and friends. In other words, 
when they traveled home from the Passover families did 
not travel together, as we would, but they traveled in 
caravans; the men traveled by themselves; the women 
traveled by themselves, and the children were permitted 
to go with either crowd in the caravan. The reason they 
lost Jesus at the age of twelve was because they divided 
their family. Here we have a picture of how we may sor- 
rowfully lose our children — lose our Lord. 

Look at the prodigal son just for a moment. He had a 
beautiful home, a good father, good brother, everything 
plenty, but he became dissatisfied with the old home, and 
so he asked his father to divide the inheritance — "Father, 
let me go away from home, and let me be a man and 
help myself in the world." The good father gave him his 
possessions and he started away — started away from a 
good Christian home, met bad company and just as long 
as he had plenty of money he had friends, but when his 
money was gone, his friends were gone. The first thing 
that he discovers is that he is hungry and has no money 
with which to buy anything to eat; he offers his services, 
but is not wanted; he goes from one place to another 
until finally he finds a herd of swine; he offers his ser- 
vices and they say, "All right, you can watch over these 
pigs; you will get very little wages, indeed you will not 
get any, but you can eat with them," and he was very 
glad to get down beside the swine and eat corn. Then 
he came to himself; then he began to think of the old 



FIRST SUNDAY AFTER EPIPHANY. 147 

home that he left; he began to think how even the ser- 
vants at home sat down at the table and had plenty, and 
here I, the heir, the son, am sitting beside these filthy 
swine, and cannot even get a decent bite of corn. I will 
go home again, and I will say to my father, 'Father, I have 
sinned against heaven and against thee;' and he started 
home, so hungry that he could hardly reach home, and 
every once in a while his conscience would say, 'What 
are you going to say?' "I will say, 'Father, I have sinned 
against heaven and against Thee' " ; but before he reached 
home the father comes out and throws his arms around 
him, and kisses him, and draws him into the household 
again, and thanks God that the family is united — that 
the lost is found. Why was the poor prodigal lost? Be- 
cause the home was divided. 

If we look around over our own country in the present 
day and remember that for every nine marriages there 
is a divorce; if we look around in our own homes to-day 
and find that six nights out of the week the husband and the 
wife in some homes are not together; if we look around in 
our own homes and find that many sons and daughters 
would rather go out into the wine rooms and into the 
saloons and dives and dens than into the home, is it any 
wonder that we are going to lose our Lord? There is no 
one thing that burdens my soul to-day, as it ought to bur- 
den every Christian, so much as the ungodly homes of our 
country — bad government — bad municipal government 
— bad citizenship — crime of all kinds, can be traced back 
to ungodly homes. Oh, husbands and wives, will you never 
remember that when you were married you vowed to be 
faithful to each other until death separated you? In the 
name of common sense, men, how can you nail your lips 
against your wives? In the name of everything that per- 
tains to the soul's eternal good, how can you divide your 
families as you do? That is the way to lose the Lord. 

2. Not only by dividing our families do we lose our 
Lord, but we may also lose Him by depending upon others. 
"But they, supposing Him to have been in the company, 
w r ent a clay's journey; and they sought Him among their 



148 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

kinsfolk and acquaintance. And when they found Him 
not, they turned back again to Jerusalem, seeking Him." 
How did they lose Him? Xot only by being divided, but 
by supposing something that was not. I meet people all 
over this country and hear them say, "Suppose the Bible- 
is not inspired?" "Suppose there is no hell?" "Suppose 
there is no heaven?" "Suppose when a man dies it is the 
end of all?" My dear friends, those suppositions do not 
originate on high. Those suppositions come from the devil, 
and if he can just get you to suppose there is no hell, and 
to suppose there is no heaven, and to suppose that the 
Bible is not God's Word, and to keep you supposing until 
he has you in hell, that is the way to lose your Lord. 

They depended on their kinsfolk and their acquaintance. 
Many a man to-day is depending on his good old Christian 
mother, depending on his good old Christian father, de- 
pending on his family history, depending on some good 
friend instead of depending on his own faith in the Lord 
Jesus Christ. The fact that your father is a Christian, 
young man, will never save your soul. The fact that your 
mother was a godly mother, will never save your soul. I 
must stand before my God and you must stand before your 
God, and when it comes to your soul's salvation, it is a mat- 
ter between you and your Savior. Depend on any man on 
earth, or on your own righteousness, or anything else ex- 
cept the great mercy of Jesus Christ, and you lose your 
Lord. 

3. Another reason why they lost their Lord, was be- 
cause they sought Him where He could not be found. It 
was only one day until they discovered that He was lost, 
and certainly only took another day to go back from 
where they started, and so, if they had only known how 
to find the Lord, they would have found Him at the end 
of the second day instead of at the end of the third day; 
but the trouble was when they got back to Jerusalem, 
they were hunting around on the streets, from house to 
house. They lost Him, therefore, one day longer, because 
they did not seek Him where He might be found. 

When we look around in the world to-day we find 
that the people are trying to find salvation here and there, 



FIRST SUNDAY AFTER EPIPHANY. 1 19 

in their own righteousness, and in places where there is 
a Christless religion, and they. never will find Him there. 
I am not opposing any amusements that are proper, but 
there are places in this world where you can never find 
your Savior — where you can never find your Lord, and if 
you will not come where He can be found, you will simply 
lose Him. 

III. How He may lose us. 

1. He may lose us if we do not go to the temple of 
God to find Him. If there is any one thing I would like 
to impress upon this audience this morning, and make it 
the rule of our lives in this New Year that is before us, 
it is a prayer to God for every man, woman and child to 
become a Christian soon in this year. Oh, let us not be 
satisfied with husband out of the church — with the wife 
out of the church; let us not be satisfied with the young 
men and the young women out of the church — w T ith the 
little children out of the church. Young married people, 
look at Joseph and Mary. They did not sit down there at 
Nazareth and say, "We cannot go to the Passover; it is 
almost fifty miles up there, it is too far, and we are not 
very well any way." No. They went to Jerusalem though 
they had to walk fifty miles; and they w T ent to the temple. 
Their service was not too long. Seven long days they 
worshipped their God there, and they went as it was their 
custom — not only now and then. What an example there 
to the young parents of our country. Young man, you 
can not any more afford to stay out of the church when 
you are well enough to go, than you can afford to take a 
match to-morrow and burn your business down. God did 
not say, "Kemember the Sabbath Day and keep it holy now 
and then"; but he said "Remember the Sabbath Day and 
keep it holy" — as often as it comes. 

Young mother, you cannot afford to stay at home simply 
because there is a babe in the house. Bring the babe to 
church. You say, "The babe disturbs my hearing." Sup- 
pose you do lose a little of the sermon; hadn't you better 
lose a little of the sermon than to lose all of it? And 
hadn't you better teach that child from infancy that the 



150 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

house of God is the place for children to be? Had you 
not better, like Joseph and Mary, take your little boy and 
go to God's house? Fathers and mothers ought to be there. 
Little boys and little girls ought to be there. 

The learned ought to be there. It seems once in a while 
that some people think they know just a little too much 
to go to church; they think they know just a little too 
much to go to Sunday-School, to teachers' meeting, etc> 
but I find in my text this morning that the Lord Jesus 
Christ, who made the heavens and the earth, who could hold 
all your wisdom on the end* of His little finger and hardly 
see it, does not find Himself too great to go to catechet- 
ical lectures — asking and answering questions. I find old 
doctors of divinity, who spent their whole lives studying the 
Scriptures, were glad to sit down in the temple and study 
God's Holy Word, and, as I said a few Sundays ago, there 
is not a sermon ever preached, based upon the Word of God, 
that has not a message for somebody and for everybody. 
God, the Holy Spirit, wants you in His temple, and if you 
come to this temple, fathers and mothers, sons and daugh- 
ters, learned and ignorant, you will all find the Lord here; 
and if you do not come to the house of God, I say He may 
lose you. 

2. Not only may He lose you if you do not come to the 
house of God as you should, but He may lose you if you 
do not take Him with you on the highway. If Joseph and 
Mary had taken their little son, at the age of twelve, on the 
highway, they would not have lost Him. They said, "We 
will go on the highway alone to-day," and they went alone, 
and when the evening came, and they wanted their boy, 
He was not there. Not only did they lose their Lord that 
day, but their Lord lost them. There are some people very 
religious in the house of God ; they are very good Christians 
on Sunday, but from Monday morning until Saturday night, 
they think they can go out all alone and leave their Lord 
back of them. I want you to understand if you are a Chris- 
tian you must take Jesus with you wherever you go. You 
may find fault with me sometimes because I criticise your 
actions severely, but I stand on that basis because it is the 
Word of God, and I say to every one of you, that in what 



FIRST SUNDAY AFTER EPIPHANY. 151 

you are going to do to-morrow, what you are going to do 
on Tuesday, what you are going to do on Wednesday, what 
you are going to do from the first hour until the last, if 
you cannot take Jesus with you, then, my friends, the Lord 
is going to lose you and you will lose Him. "He that will 
not confess Me before men, I will not confess before My 
Father in heaven; and he who denies Me before men, I will 
deny before My Father which is in heaven." 

Then, my dear friends, wherever you go, in all your work 
and amusements, in everything you do from this moment 
until you breathe your last breath, live so that you can 
say, "My Lord and my God, I ask Thy blessing upon this 
thing I am going to do. Watch me and go with me day 
and night, that I may be with Thee forever. O Lord, 
do not lose us." 

3. Then again, if we do not want the Lord to lose us, 
Ave must take Him into our homes. "And He went down 
with them, and came to Nazareth, and was subject unto them ; 
but His mother kept all these sayings in her heart. And 
Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, and in favor with 
God and man." Yes, Jesus grew in stature and in wisdom 
down at Nazareth. Let us not forget that as Son of God 
He could not grow in wisdom, but as son of man He had to 
grow just as other children grow; He had to learn just as 
other children learn; and the more He grew and the more 
He learned, and the more He labored with His father and 
with them in the home, the more all Nazareth loved that 
boy, and the more all Nazareth loved the man, and He loved 
them, and He grew in knowledge and wisdom, and stature, 
and in favor with God and man. For eighteen long years 
He worked with Joseph. For eighteen years the hand that 
nailed the stars in the heaven, helped His faither to nail 
up buildings. There was nothing too much for Him, and by 
His growing they also grew in their wisdom. 

Let us not forget, my friends, that when we take Jesus 
into our homes, He grows, and the more we know Him 
the larger He gets and the more He grows, but by that growth 
we also grow. Mary grew on that day when she went into 
the temple and asked Him why He had "dealt thus with us." 
That day she was small in religious knowledge, but He told 



152 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

her, "I must be about My Father's business/' and He re- 
mained in His Father's business there for years and years 
in the home, and Mary grew with her Savior, and when 
the Lord Jesus Christ was dying on Calvary — when a Peter 
had denied Him — when a Judas Iscariot had betrayed Him 
— when all the apostles had left Him, but John, who stands 
there? Mary. Mary grew. She had been with Jesus in 
the home, and He with her, until she made up her mind 
that she would stay with Him just as long as possible. 
When He was dying she was there. When she was taken 
to her home by John she listened to His cry, "It is finished." 
When He was dead and in the grave, the first one there 
was Mary. Mary so loved that Lord of hers that if she 
could have slept in His grave, she would have done so. 
Nothing could separate her from her Lord and Master, and 
to-day we know she is with Him. May God help us to take 
Jesus into our homes, and that we may grow there, and 
He may grow in our knowledge, until we shall, like Mary of 
old, cling to Him until we shall be with Him in that grand 
heavenly home above. 

It makes my soul rejoice to see this multitude of people 
sitting down at Jesus' feet, learning of Him, but oh ! what a 
meeting that will be w T hen those dear ones of ours who have 
gone beforehand all the heavenly host, and all the saints 
shall dwell with God and He with them, when we shall 
stand before Him face to face, and the Child will then be 
King forever. Amen. 

PRAYER. 

Lord, our God, who dost manifest Thyself as the Godman to the world ; 
Thou who didst lose Thyself, and Thou whom we did lose, and Thou who 
canst also lose us, We thank Thee, Heavenly Father, that Thou hast given 
us a Savior who came to seek and to save that which is lost. And we 
thank Thee that Thou hast not only come to seek and to save, but that 
Thou hast sought us and hast found us, and that we have found Thee. 
We ask Thy divine blessing upon these words this morning. May they be 
deeply engraved in our hearts, and may we all resolve as we go out of this 
house to-day, that from now on, as never before, we also shall be about our 
Father's business. We pray Thee that Thou wilt help us to grow in wis- 
dom; that our faith may cling to Thee as it never clung before. When we 
cannot see the way, let us trust, and still obey. Lord, »our God, we ask 



FIRST SUNDAY AFTER EPIPHANY. 153 

that Thou wilt be with the teachers and with the officers who have been 
selected to do the work for the coming year in Thy School. God, give them 
the Spirit of Thy Son, Jesus Christ, in the temple. May we go down 
deep into Thy Word, and thereby feed our souls and those who listen to 
us, and be the means of gathering many unto Thy home. We ask it all in 
the name of Jesus, who taught us to pray: 

Our Father, who art in heaven : hallowed by Thy name ; Thy kingdom 
come; Thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven; give us this day our 
daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass 
against us ; lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil ; for Thine 
is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever and ever, Amen. 



SECOND SUNDAY AFTER EPIPHANY. 



A MARRIAGE AND A MIRACLE. 



H 



john 2 : 1-11. 

*^ / ¥ ND the third day there was a marriage in Cana of Galilee; and the 
mother of Jesus was there ; and both Jesus was called, and His dis- 
ciples, to the marriage. And when they wanted wine the mother^ of 
Jesus saith unto Him, 'They have no wine.' Jesus saith unto her, 'Woman, 
what have I to do with thee? Mine hour is not yet come.' His mother 
saith unto the servants, 'Whatsoever He saith unto you, do it.' And' there 
were set there six water pots of stone, after the manner of the purifying of 
the Jews, containing two or three firkins apiece. Jesus saith unto them, 
'Fill the water pots with water.' And they filled them up to the brim. And 
He saith unto them, 'Draw out now, and bear unto the governor of the 
feast.' And they bare it. When the ruler of the feast had tasted the water 
that was made wine and knew not whence it was (but the servants which 
drew the water knew) ; the governor of the feast called the bridegroom, 
?.nd saith unto him, 'Every man at the beginning doth set forth good wine; 
and when men have well drunk, then that which is worse ; but thou hast 
kept the good wine until now. This beginning of miracles did Jesus in Cana 
of Galilee, and manifested forth His glorv; and His disciples believed on 
Him." 

Sanctify us, O Lord, through Thy truth — 

Thy Word is truth. Amen. 



Beloved in Christ: — 

After the Lord Jesus Christ had manifested Him- 
self to the world as the Savior in Bethlehem; after 
He had manifested Himself to the heathen, the wise 
men of the East; after He had manifested Himself to the 
doctors of divinity at the age of twelve, we hear nothing of 
Him until eighteen years afterwards, when He comes to 
John to be baptized, then calls His disciples, and three days 
afterwards begins His ministry — not at a funeral, but at 
a wedding. Let us not forget that the Lord God did not 
intend to make the impression upon the Christian Church 

154 



SECOND SUNDAY AFTER EPIPHANY. 155 

in its very beginning that it is a sad Institution, but rather 
a happy one. The Lord, looking into the future, to the day 
of Judgment, knew that when He came with all His holy 
angels, it would be the greatest wedding there ever was — 
when the Great Bridegroom should be married to His bride, 
the Christian Church — and consequently began His min- 
istry at a wedding, in the presence of a bridegroom and a 
bride, where He might not only attend a marriage, but 
perform a miracle. I invite your attention this morning to 

A MARRIAGE AND A MIRACLE. 

I. A marriage. 

"And the third day there was a marriage in Cana of 
Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there, and both Jesus 
was called, and His disciples, to the marriage." 

The Lord God began His great work after creation with 
a marriage; He began His ministry with a marriage; and 
He intends to carry on the work in this world through mar- 
riage. In other words, He has planted a desire in the heart 
of every man to have a bosom companion, who shall be an 
helpmeet; and He has planted in the heart of every woman 
a desire to find the right man w T ho with her may help to 
fight the battles of life, and this union should require at 
least two things: (1) A Christian courtship; (2) A Chris- 
tian ceremony, and it would not do to explain this lesson 
before us this morning without dwelling a short time on 
these two topics. 

1. Let us not forget, my friends, that every young man 
should have an honest courtship, as well as every young lady, 
and few would be the family troubles and none would be 
the divorces. There is too little said in these days on this 
great and important subject. These school-boys and school- 
girls who are going together, and coming home late, ought 
to be kept at home by their parents, or their parents ought 
to go out riding with them. I maintain as that priest in 
Wisconsin did not long ago, that there should absolutely 
be no courtship except with the view to marriage, and parents 
who are sitting before me to-night will recognize the fact 
when it is too late, that every young person needs watch- 



156 THE GEEAT GOSPEL. 

ing. A very sad funeral which occurred not far away this 
last week, was not half as sad, the mother said, as the con- 
dition of one of the living, led astray by a Mansfield man. 
In honest courtship, I say, every young man ought to look 
for a wife who has good sense; for a wife who has willing 
hands ; and for a wife who has a Christian heart. 

What I mean by good sense, others may not understand 
without a little explanation. There are cultured young 
ladies, in certain lines, who, however, do not possess that 
great gift that some of our mothers possessed who could 
neither read nor write — good sense. I remember a young 
man in college who made up his mind that he was going 
to marry a very accomplished musician; all he was looking 
for in all his travels, was a very accomplished lady who 
could play and sing. He found her ; he married her, and in 
a very short time he found out that even music without 
good sense makes a bad home. 

One of the first things that we find in this marriage at 
Cana of Galilee was a bride who must have had good sense 
or she would not have had Jesus and His disciples there. 
And not only was she a woman of good sense, but she was 
one who must have had willing hands, and therefore in- 
vited Mary, the mother of Jesus, to take a deep interest in 
the work at that marriage, which lasted not one hour, nor 
one day, but seven days ; and we see at once how the mother 
of Jesus was willing to roll up her sleeves and go to work 
and take an interest in anything that was needed. I tell 
you, my friends, every woman who has a family recognizes 
what every young man ought to know, that every wife and 
mother, no difference whether she does the work herself 
or not, ought to be one who knows how to keep house; she 
ought to be one who knows how to prepare a good meal ; she 
ought to be one who knows how to manage; and she ought 
to be one who is willing to put her hands together with her 
husband's hands, and let the four hands do the work that 
is to be done by the parents. The reason that some men 
never can succeed is because they have no helping hands 
in the house; and the reason some women never can succeed 
is because those big lazy hands belonging to her husband 
will not help her along with the work. 



SECOND SUNDAY AFTER EPIPHANY. 157 

Not only should he look for willing hands, but for a 
Christian heart. If there is any one person in the home 
who should have a high regard for things that are holy, 
for things that are good, who should have a high desire 
to lead children heavenward, it should be the wife and 
mother. I cannot imagine a more ungodly home than that 
one that has a wife in it, or a mother in it, who does not 
lead her children from their infancy until they leave the 
parental roof, to Him who went to prepare a place for us 
in His many mansions above. 

On the other hand, I say the lady should look for a 
young man who possesses mental strength, physical strength, 
and moral strength. 

A man should lift his wife up, and not push her down. 
A man should have brain — brain that can think ; a man that 
can distinguish between one who is called a husband and 
one who is a real man. The ancient philosopher walked 
in the streets of Athens with a lantern in his hand by 
daylight, and when asked what he was looking for, cried 
out "I am looking for a man" — the streets of Athens were 
full of people, but there were no men there. How often 
we look around in our homes and see things there dressed 
with mens ? clothing, but no manhood there. A wife should 
look for a man — a man of mental strength. 

She should look for a man of physical strength as well 
as of mental strength. In 1885 when I was attending the 
theological seminary in Philadelphia, I went to the dime 
museum to see the living skeleton exhibited there for many 
weeks. I never beheld a man with a finer developed head; 
I never beheld a man with such a head and such a body 
before — simply a skeleton, without flesh, just the skin on 
the bones ; and, strange as it may seem, a lady of high stand- 
ing happened to go to the museum and fell in love with 
that skeleton, and not only fell in love with him, but mar- 
ried him, and she discovered before six weeks that it is pretty 
hard to keep house with bones; it was not long until she 
asked for a divorce. It takes physical strength for a man to 
lead in the duties of the household, of the present day 
especially, and why any consumptive man should be mar- 
ried, or why any man without enough physical strength 



158 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

to take care of himself, should enter into the marriage state, 
I do not understand. 

We are talking this morning about such a marriage as 
would please God, and if there is any one thing a woman 
ought to look for, above these that I have mentioned, it 
is moral strength, and true morality does not consist in 
self-righteousness; true morality cannot be found in a hea- 
then. The carnal mind is enmity against God, and an unre- 
generated man is not, in God's sight, a moral man. When 
I speak of a moral man, I mean a man who has a new 
heart in him; I mean a man who can pray as David did 
when he sid, "Create in me a clean heart, O God, and 
renew a right spirit within me." How can a young lady 
expect to live a pleasant life with a man who has physical 
strength and even mental strength, if he has not the love 
of God and the love of His Word, and the love for things 
that are good and holy, that are required in the, days of 
trial and trouble that are bound to come in every home. 
This little honeymoon soon goes down and there are trials 
in every home, and in no other way can you have a real 
pleasant home, but for the husband and wife to get down 
on their knees before God and ask His guidance and direc- 
tion, and the young woman who has bound herself for life 
to a man who is a giant physically and mentally, but a 
dwarf morally, has ruined her own body and her own soul, 
and will bring into existence a family that needs the com- 
passion of every thinking man. 

2. So much for the courtship, — but a Christian mar- 
riage also results in a ceremony. 

"And the third day there was a marriage in Cana of 
Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there; and both Jesus 
was called, and His disciples, to the marriage." 

Just in what kind of building this marriage was cele- 
brated, I do not know, but one thing I do know, — Jesus 
was there; His disciples were there, and consequently it 
was the Church. "Where two or three are gathered together 
in My name, I will be in the midst of them." The Church 
does not consist of stone or brick, or of buildings ; the Church 
of God consists of the Word and the holy sacraments admin- 
istered in the presence of the Master, and for that reason 



SECOND SUNDAY AFTER EPIPHANY. 159 

I say a Christian marriage never should take place in secret. 
A Christian marriage never should take place in such a 
way as if we were ashamed of Christ, or of each other. 
Among the heathen Spartans it was the custom that a 
man would have to steal his bride and dress her in man's 
clothing until it became plain to the whole community that 
a mother could not be dressed in man's clothing, and conse- 
quently she is his wife. Do we, as Christian people, want 
to follow the heathen Spartans? And yet there are so many 
young people in the present day who seem to think it wise 
to go to Kentucky or some other State to get married, and 
then go to the court house and to the editors of the papers 
and tell them not to publish the matter ; who try to persuade 
their own parents not to let anybody know, or possibly even 
deceive their own parents. Shame on the secret marriage! 
If I had to marry a woman, and I could not let the world 
know of it, I would want her to wear a veil the rest of her 
life. If I had a sister who would marry a man whom she 
could not marry openly and in public, I would say, "Do not 
go another day with him." Is there any better place to be 
married than in the Church of God? — there where we are 
baptized in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost — 
there where we are confirmed in the name of our God, and 
promise to be faithful until death — there where we go to 
the Lord's Supper — there where God comes to meet us in 
His means of grace : is not that, after all, the best place for 
man and wife to vow to be faithful to each other until death? 
But if it cannot take place in the house of God, then let 
the home become a house of God; have it at the family 
altar; invite friends and relatives, and let it be known that 
this is not a secret matter ; it is public, and the world shall 
know it is honest. The reason some people are so secret 
about their marriage is this: they do not want their own 
family to know, or the children afterwards, to figure up 
the difference between the date of the marriage and the date 
when the first child was born. Shame on the secret mar- 
riage. 

I have not only shown you where this marriage should 
be celebrated, but I have already spoken of the guests that 
should be there. Invite Jesus to your marriage. One of the 



160 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

most beautiful paintings we have of Dr. Luther and his 
Katie, is at the eve of their marriage bowing down on their 
knees in prayer. Is it any winder that home was a godly 
home? Is it any wonder it was filled with persons who 
loved their Lord and their God? The family that eats its 
first meal without prayer, and spends the first week without 
prayer, has already let Satan drive the wedge that will 
enter deeper as life passes on. 

We should not only notice where the marriage should be 
celebrated and who should be there, but we should know 
very well what it means. It does not mean to come together 
and simply get ready to be separated by a divorce. I speak 
of this matter at this time because so many divorces have 
been granted right in this county and in this State through- 
out the past year. No wonder that the judges of our courts 
are getting together to pass a new law; no wonder that 
ministerial unions everywhere are protesting against mar- 
rying people who are already living in adultery by their very 
divorces which they have taken. Dear friends, we need to 
have new laws on this great subject. I therefore call your 
attention to the fact that when a marriage vow is taken, it 
means until God severs that tie. "What God hath joined 
together, let no man put asunder." It means not only that 
they should dwell together for life, but it means that they 
should dwell together in one faith, and it seems to me that 
is a point that every young person should consider well. 
How often you find one young person, a Christian, marrying 
an ungodly person, in spite of the fact that God says, "Be 
ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers." It would 
break my heart if I had to know that the friend of my bosom 
was one who does not love my God — if I had to know that 
the dearest friend of my bosom could not join in with my 
prayer — if I had to know that when she is sick and dying 
that I could not expect her to go and spend eternity where 
I shall be. 

The question comes up daily in this country of many 
denominations: Where shall the wife go, or where the hus- 
band? And some people think they have solved the whole 
question by saying, "The wife shall always go with the 
husband." It depends upon where the husband goes. There 



SECOND SUNDAY AFTER EPIPHANY. 161 

are some people who can go anywhere and feel at home, 
because they are not at home anywhere; there are people who 
can join any church, because they do not know what any 
church teaches; there are some people who have a sort of 
India rubber faith — stretch it and it will fly any direction, 
but when a man has the true faith — a faith that rests upon 
the solid Word of God, he cannot change it for any man 
or any woman. The rule, therefore, is all false that the 
wife should go with the husband, or that the husband should 
go with the wife; they both should go where God's Word 
leads them. That is the only safe rule. If the husband 
has the right faith and can prove it by the Word of God, let 
his wife learn the same faith, if she can, from the Word of 
God, and go with him; if the wife has the right faith and 
can prove it by the Word of God, let the husband learn that 
faith and go with her; but the only rule that is safe is that 
we should know that God's Word settles our faith. "Be 
thou faithful until death and I will give thee a crown of 
life." As was well said by one of the Lutheran theologians : 
"When a man is a real Lutheran, he will die one." When 
you can prove every doctrine that you have got, you cannot 
change it until God Almighty changes His Word. 

II. A miracle. 

We have before ns this morning not only a marriage 
but a miracle. 

"And when they wanted wine the mother of Jesus saith 
unto Him, "They have no wine." Jesus saith unto her, 
"Woman, what have I to do with thee? Mine hour is not 
yet come." His mother saith unto the servants, "What- 
soever He saith unto you, do it." And there were set there 
six water pots of stone, after the manner of the purifying 
of the Jews, containing two or three firkins apiece. Jesus 
saith unto them, "Fill the water pots with water," and they 
filled them up to the brim. And He saith unto them, "Draw 
out now, and bear unto the governor of the feast," and they 
bare it. When the ruler of the feast had tasted the water 
that was made wine, and knew not whence it was (but the 
servants which drew the water knew) ; the governor of the 
ii 



162 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

feast called the bridegroom; and saith unto him, "Every man 
at the beginning doth set forth good wine; and when men 
have well drunk, then that which is worse; but thou hast 
kept the good wine until now." This beginning of miracles 
did Jesus in Cana of Galilee, and manifested forth His 
glory; and His disciples believed on Him." 

We have here a lesson that you very seldom hear a ser- 
mon preached on, for some reason. It gives a great many 
people trouble. I have met professed Christians who have 
said : "I wish that lesson were not in the Bible," and I have 
met other people who do not know anything else in the 
Bible except this lesson, and they are so glad it is here. 
I have before me in my mind this morning two classes of 
people who need a little instruction: (1) The fanatical 
prohibitionist; (2) The saloonkeeper. The saloonkeeper, if 
he does not know another passage in the Bible, knows this 
one; and the prohibitionist, if he could just get rid of this 
chapter, would be in glory. 

Dear friends, I have always found that the Lord God is 
safer than any man, and for my part I love this chapter 
just as much as I love any chapter in the Bible, and I 
hold it up this morning between these two classes of people, 
and may God help us to the real truth. I maintain : 

1. Jesus made good wine. 

2. Jesus made plenty of wine. 

3. Jesus made the wine useful. 

1. This is the plain teaching of God's Word. He made 
good wine. Prohibitionists, let me speak to you a few mo- 
ments now. He did not make raisin tea. In some places 
in this country at present ministers of the Gospel have taken 
raisins and poured water over them to give the holy com- 
munion, because they have fallen out with Jesus Christ. 
A certain doctor of divinity in Brooklyn, in 1887, made 
the statement that if Jesus Christ drank wine he would 
not receive Him as a member in his church, and yet Jesus 
Christ tells us Himself that He did drink wine. The con- 
sequence is that some people have become so fanatical that 
instead of giving the wine in the holy communion, as I 
said a moment ago, they are giving raisin tea. A minister 



SECOND SUNDAY AFTER EPIPHANY. 1(>3 

in Jelloway, not very far from here, fifteen years ago, became 
so fanatical that he gave milk at the Lord's Supper instead 
of wine. My friends, I would rather be a blasphemer like 
Ingersol, than to mutilate the Word of God as those people 
did. 

I would say furthermore, prohibitionists, that the Lord 
God not only made good wine, but He did not make "Dam- 
nation." We have a certain class of people who look upon 
wine and say that that is damnation itself, yet the Lord 
Jesus Christ, the night when He instituted His Supper, 
took wine and blessed it, and gave it to His disciples, and 
said, "Drink ye all of it; for this is My blood of the New 
Testament, which is shed for many for the remission of sins." 
Do you mean to say to me that the Lord Jesus Christ took 
some damnation and blessed it? Did He take damnation 
and give it to His disciples in the Holy Supper? Is it not 
time, my dear friends, that we stand by the Lord God 
instead of by fanatics? 

I would go a little further, prohibitionists, and say He 
did not make a mistake. Some of you may think, if the 
Lord God only had not made that mistake in making wine 
at the marriage in Cana of Galilee ! Did you ever find that 
Jesus Christ had made a mistake anywhere? He knew 
what kind of people would live in the nineteenth and twen- 
tieth centuries. He knew what He would have to write down 
in the Word of God in order that they who wanted the real 
truth might find it, and I thank my God just as much for 
this chapter as for the one wherein He instituted the Lord's 
Supper — I thank Him just as much for this chapter as I 
do for the one wherein He describes the Holy Pentecost; 
the one is just as sacred and good as the other. Jesus made 
no mistake. 

And on the other hand, I would say to those who are 
in sympathy with the American saloon : Where do you find 
in God's Word that the Lord Jesus Christ ever built a 
little house and painted the windows so that no one could 
look in, and set screens before the door, and put up a bar 
and stood behind that bar and dished out drink until, as 
we read in the Book of Proverbs, men stand and look at it 
until it bites like an adder? Where do vou find that in 



164 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

God's Word? Where do you find in God's Word that He 
has started a little place in the darkness where you hear 
more filthy language in a single day than any Christian 
ought to hear in all his life? You say, "We run a respect- 
able saloon." Where is it? I would like to find it. Where 
is there a respectable saloon in God's world? If there is 
any place where men feel tempted to lie and curse and damn, 
it is in a saloon ; if there is any place where they abuse the 
very privilege that God gave them, and the very thing that 
God created, it is there. 

Furthermore, where did Jesus Christ ever niake drunk- 
ards? There is no denying the fact that these saloons all 
over the country are making drunkards. Boys are coming- 
out of those saloons and we see them every day. Last. night 
at twelve o'clock, driving through this city, I passed no 
fewer than three men staggering home. Where did they 
come from — from the church? Did they come from the 
wedding at Cana of Galilee? No. Jesus Christ did not 
make drunkards. Jesus Christ did not make saloons; Jesus 
Christ did not make this old rotten whisky you are selling 
to people to eat their very brains and rob them of their souls, 
and rob their homes. It is said by a certain great lecturer 
in this country that when a drunkard died they took his 
brain and set a match to it, and it burned like alcohol, and 
he drew the conclusion that he ought to take every drunkard's 
brain and lay it on the step of every saloon and let it burn 
and burn until men wakened up to the damnable institu- 
tions which are being kept by men who still want to find 
a little comfort in the marriage of Cana of Galilee. 

The Lord God made good wine; he did not make sweet 
grape juice. Some have been trying to help the Lord out 
of this trouble by calling this "oinos," just sweet grape 
juice, and not real genuine wine. I call your attention to 
the fact that the thirty-seven times this word is used in 
the New Testament, and its relation to the Hebrew and 
the Greek, clearly show it can mean nothing else than fer- 
mented wine. I have read all these pamphlets sent to me 
trying to prove that Jesus made sweet wine, and they say, 
"How could it be otherwise? Didn't these disciples pour 
water into those crocks and did they not dip out wine? Did 



SECOND SUNDAY AFTER EPIPHANY. L65 

it have time to ferment?" That is the great logic that is 
used. I would like to ask whether it had time to become 
grape and get to be sweet juice. 

How about these wonders — are there any miracles to- 
day? There is not anything- around us that is not a wonder. 
The only reason it is no great miracle to see the sun in the 
heavens, is because we see it every day. If there had never 
been a sun in the heavens before and we should see it to- 
morrow morning, it would be a greater miracle than the 
exchanging of Avater into wine. If potatoes had grown on 
trees and peaches had been dug out of the ground, it would 
be a miracle to see peaches growing on trees and to see 
potatoes dug out of the ground. The reason we think it 
is natural for peaches to grow on trees is because we 
have always seen them grow that way. It was no more 
of a miracle for God to put that water into the crocks and 
change it into wine, than it is for him to bring it up through 
the vine into the grape, and to let the juice ferment and make 
wine — one is no more of a miracle than the other. The fact 
is that Jesus Christ made wine that was so good that it was 
better than the wine they had before, which men w T hen they 
had well drunk, could not tell from the poor wine any more. 

2. You will notice that Jesus not only made good wine, 
but He made plenty of it. There were six large crocks con- 
taining over one hundred gallons. One hundred gallons at 
a wedding that lasted seven days. It does not say they 
drank it all, but it was there, and now, prohibitionists, 
what are you going to do about this wine question? You 
say you do not want any wine manufactured at all. What 
are you going to do when you have Holy Communion? Cele- 
brate it with milk, like those foolish people at Jelloway? 
Are you going to try to legislate the world better by law? 
What are you going to do with this question? No wine at 
all? Every good Christian on God's earth would raise up 
his voice and say, "We will have wine." I, for my part, 
would never allow, by anything I could do to prevent it, that 
there should be no wine in the world. "Well," says some 
one, "what we want is a scarcity of wine," but our Lord 
and Master made over one hundred gallons at a wedding. 
You say you don't like to hear that? Then you don't like 



166 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

your Bible — then you don't like God's Word. What are 
you going to do about it? "But/ 7 you say, "it is not safe." 
I say, my friends, that it is not safe to have just a little wine. 
The Lord God made plenty of it. A little wine always has 
been dangerous. There is nothing the human race so much 
desires as the thing that is scarce. What makes the diamond 
so precious? The fact that you cannot dig it out of the 
ground down here — the fact that you have to go and hunt 
and search for it. If one potato were worth one thousand 
dollars, there would be plenty of women sitting before me 
this morning who would give up all they had to wear a string 
of potatoes around their necks. What makes a thing desired? 
It's scarcity. What makes it valuable? The fact that you 
cannot get it. What makes people w T ant more wine? The 
fact that they know it is hard to get. The Lord Jesus Christ 
knew what He was doing. He knew that if He would only 
make one or two gallons of wine, every man would want 
that one or two gallons in a little space of time, and get 
intoxicated. He made one hundred gallons of wine, and 
the result was that no man cared whether he drank it or 
not. They listened to the Gospel and were converted to 
Him. What is the solution, prohibitionists, of the wine ques- 
tion? Not the non-manufacture of it, not its scarcity, but 
plenty of it! If you could put a hogshead of wine in every 
house in this community, you could not find a boy or a girl 
who would want it; if you could fill the rivers and ditches 
with wine, not a person would want to go and drink it. 
A man said to me the other day, "I was reading the old 
story of Adam and Eve, and I just wondered whether the 
same condition of things existed to-day. So" he says, "I 
just got a little bird and put it into a crock and set the crock 
in my house, and said to my wife, 'Don't you look into that 
crock until I come back,' and when I came back the bird 
was gone." I have in mind a man not over twenty miles 
from here who had a special lock put on a special door in 
his cellar and there he kept his little jug of whisky, and 
the boys did not dare to touch it. I have in mind that 
man's brother, who lived only three miles away, and who had 
a bottle of whisky standing in the cupboard every day that 



SECOND SUNDAY AFTER EPIPHANY. 167 

the boys were at home. The first father said, "Boys, you dare 
not touch that whisky;" his brother, with better judgment, 
said, "Boys, up there is the bottle of whisky; if you are sick 
take a swallow of it; if not, let it.alone; it is to be taken only 
as medicine." To-day the first father has two boys in the 
grave, who died of delirium tremens and the third is going 
that way; the second father, who had better judgment and 
allowed his boys to see these things every day, has not a son 
who cares anything for any of these things. The Lord Jesus 
Christ knew what He was doing. Oh, that we all had the 
wisdom of Christ at the wedding of Cana of Galilee, that we 
would take our boys and girls home and show them these 
things, so that they will not long for the day when they can 
get away from father and mother and get down to those 
hell holes and drink those things and get drunk and intoxi- 
cated, and their poor souls are lost. I want to tell you 
there are two ways of making drunkards. The one is to 
look at the wine as we read in Proverbs, for people to drink 
it, and drink it, and drink it, instead of using it as God 
intended; and the other is to say, "You dare not touch it, 
and if I catch you at it I will whip you." If that child does 
not turn out a drunkard, I do not know anything about it. 
Not more than a week ago in a home in this city, a mother 
boasted to me that her son never saw an intoxicating drink 
in her home, and she thanked God for the position that she 
took, and on my way home I saw her son coming out of a 
saloon. (Laughter.) These things are not laughable to me 
— they are sad; doubly sad. I am sorry that mother did 
not know how to train that boy at home and show him the 
danger of abusing a gift of God. 

As I turn to the saloonkeeper at this time with the fact 
that Jesus made plenty of wine, I call attention to the fact 
that the saloonkeepers have made it scarce. You have made 
it scarce in the home. You have made your business so dis- 
reputable that no man any more feels like having a drop of 
the thing that you sell in his home. You have made us 
all feel that it is dangerous even to have a glass of wine 
in the house; you have made us all feel that it is dangerous 
to have the bottle of brandy in the house ; you have made us 



168 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

all feel that we dare not let the beer wagon drive up to the 
house, because we would not have our homes associated with 
your business for anything. 

And not only have you, made it scarce in the home; you 
have made it scarce in yoA own saloons. What has made 
it scarce? These saloons are not run with wine. The Lord 
Jesus Christ did not make any saloons. Very little wine 
is drunk in our saloons ; beer is not good enough for the aver- 
age drunkard — he wants the burning rum. Little comfort 
can he get out of the miracle at the wedding in Cana of Gal- 
ilee With your prices you have made it scarce. You have 
said to the young boy, "Here is a little glass of something; 
I will charge you a dime for it." It isn't Avorth a cent ; you 
charge him a dime and you make him think it is scarce, and 
he wants it ; he drinks that and he wants another, and you 
rob him of his brain, and you rob him of his money, and 
you rob him of his soul. 

3. The last thought that I would give you on this topic 
is that Jesus Christ made not only good wine and plenty of 
it, but He made it useful. It is said in the last verse of our 
text : "This beginning of miracles did Jesus in Cana of Gali- 
lee, and manifested forth His glory; and His disciples be- 
lieved on Him." 

Oh, prohibitionists, listen! The disciples believed on 
Him at the wedding where water was made into wine; the 
disciples believed on Him where there were over one hun- 
drer gallons of wine; the disciples believed on Him at a 
wedding where there was more wine than they would drink 
or could drink. There was not a single drunkard there. The 
Lord Jesus Christ was there. His disciples had just been 
called three days before, and now He manifested forth His 
glory, and the disciples went out and started into the gos- 
pel ministry, having gotten their faith strengthened where 
wine was made. Do not forget that if you have had your 
mind biased, and twisted, and turned by the folly of the 
times, and by the ungodly, or even by professed Christians, 
it is time you get down on your knees and pray over this 
second chapter of John until you are filled with the Spirit 
of God, — until you are ready to stand by the Lord Jesus 
Christ on every subject, no difference what it may be. 



SECOND SUNDAY AFTER EPIPHANY. 109 

Saloonkeepers, just one question to you. You have been 
trying to persuade yourselves that your business is right by 
this second chapter of John; you have tried to make your- 
selves believe that Jesus sanctioned your business. I want 
to ask you a question. At the miracle where Jesus made 
wine lie led souls to Christ. How many souls have you ever 
led to Christ in your saloon? If your business is sanctioned 
by the Lord Jesus Christ, then your business ought to be 
started with prayer. How many of your barkeepers are ever 
started in the business in the morning with prayer? How 
many of you have ever seen the staggering drunkards come 
in and thank God that this public disgrace is here? How 
many of you have ever taken a man's home, gotten unjustly, 
and have thanked God for this money which you received 
the way you did? How many of you have tapped the barrel 
and dished it out to people, getting ten times more than it 
is actually worth, just to pay your taxes and enhance your 
own property, to robe your own people in their good dresses, 
putting them on your own children, while the others go in 
rags? How many of you have ever done these things to the 
glory of God? Do not think you will ever go wrong if you 
stick to the Bible. Do not think you will ever go wrong if 
you stick to things sanctioned by the Lord Jesus Christ. I 
thank my Lord and Master that He made wine, and made it 
good; that He made it plentiful; that He made it useful. 
And when the people were there He led them to salvation, 
and may the Lord God help us this morning to go to Him and 
find Him as our only Savior, is my prayer. Amen. 

PRAYER. 

Our Heavenly Father : We thank Thee that Thou hast established 
the home on the Rock of Ages; we thank Thee that there is nothing good 
and right but that may be had in the home and kept there with Thy bless- 
ing resting upon it. Help us to realize more and more that all things that 
come from Thee in themselves are good; that man is bad and that man 
will remain bad until he is recreated by regeneration; and O Lord God, 
help us to look for remedies where they should be looked for ; not only in the 
legislation of the people, but more and more in Thy Word and in Thy 
means of grace. Heavenly Father, do Thou give us that Christian spirit 
and that love of Thy Truth that we will always walk in Thy ways. We 
ask Thee that Thou wilt put the right kind of thoughts into our 
.hearts and into our souls, and help us to live as the people lived in the 



170 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

presence of Jesus at the marriage in Cana of Galilee, that all things shall 
be for Thy glory and for our growth in true discipleship. We ask it all 
in the name of the Master, who taught us to pray : 

Our Father, who art in heaven: hallowed by Thy name; Thy kingdom 
come ; Thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven ; give us this day our 
daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass 
against us ; lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil ; for Thine 
is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever and ever, Amen. 



THIRD SUNDAY AFTER EPIPHANY, 



WHICH WAY? 



Matt. 8 : 1-13. 



m 



M'fM V HEN He was come down out of the mountain, great multitudes 
followed Him ; and, behold, there came a leper and worshipped 
Him, saying, 'Lord, if Thou wilt, Thou canst make me clean.' 
And Jesus put forth His hand, and touched him, saying, T will ; be thou 
clean.' And immediately his leprosy was cleansed. And Jesus saith unto 
him, 'See thou tell no man ; but go thy way, shew thyself to the priest and 
offer the gift that Moses commanded, for a testimony unto them.' And 
when Jesus was entered into Capernaum, there came unto Him a centurion, 
beseeching Him, and saying, 'Lord, my servant, lieth at home sick of the 
palsy, grievously tormented.' And Jesus saith unto him, 'I will come and 
heal him.' The centurion answered and said, 'Lord, I am not worthy that 
Thou shouldst come under my roof; but speak the word only, and my ser- 
vant shall be healed. For I am a man under authority, having soldiers under 
me, and I say to this man, 'Go,' and he goeth; and to another, 'Come,' and 
he cometh; and to my servant, 'Do this,' and he doth it.' When Jesus heard 
it He marvelled and said to them that followed, 'Verily I say unto you, I 
have not found so great faith, no, not in Israel. And I say unto you that 
many shall come from the east and west and shall sit down with Abraham, 
and Isaac, and Jacob, in the kingdom of heaven. But the children of the 
kingdom shall be cast out into outer darkness, and there shall be weeping 
and gnashing of teeth.' And Jesus said unto the centurion, 'Go thy way; 
and as thou hast believed, so be it done unto thee.' And his servant was 
healed in the selfsame hour." 

Sanctify us, O Lord, through Thy truth ; 
Thy Word is Truth. Amen 



Bear Christian Friends : — 

The Epiphany season is the season of the manifes- 
tation of Christ, the Savior, first to the Jews and 
then to the Gentiles. We have already seon how He 
manifested Himself to the Jews, and to the heathen of the 

171 



172 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

far East, and to the doctors of divinity. To-day we are 
led, as it were, between heaven and hell, between misery 
and glory in this world, down into the very presence of 
Satan and the only Savior, and the whole text seems to 
thunder into our ears, 

WHICH WAY? 

May God, the Holy Spirit, help us this morning to see 
Which Wav. 



We are asked this morning by this text to look out 
into eternity and behold heaven on the one hand and hell 
on the other. "And I say unto you that many shall come 
from the east and west and shall sit down with Abraham, 
and Isaac, and Jacob, in the kingdom of heaven. But the 
children of the kingdom shall be cast out into outer dark- 
ness, and there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth." 

1. Oh! what an Epiphan}^- — what a look into heaven! 
Behold the multitude! Sometimes we act as if we thought 
heaven would only have a few souls in it. I know the Word 
of God says, "Many are called but few are chosen ;" I know 
that the Lord Jesus Christ said, "Enter ye in at the straight 
gate; for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that 
leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in 
thereat. Because straight is the gate and narrow is the 
way which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it," 
but I call your attention to the fact that if many souls 
should be lost, few would have found heaven. It is not the 
intention and the will of God that any man should be 
lost. I do not know how many shall be in the kingdom 
of heaven, but I am told by my Savior that "Many shall 
come from the east and the west" and when you take a 
ball or globe like this earth and have them coming from 
the east and the west, they come from all around the globe. 
There shall not be a place on this broad earth from which 
immortal souls shall not come to that glorious home above. 

It shall not only be a wonderful home as to the multi- 
tude, with all the aged fathers and with all the aged 
mothers who died in Christ; with all the young men 



THIRD SUNDAY AFTER EPIPHANY. L73 

and all the young women who died with faith in the Lord 
Jesus Christ; with all the multitude of children who came 
home in the name of the Master; — there will be an 
Epiphany not only of a great number, but of that sweet, 
sweet rest, which can alone be found in heaven. Here in 
this sin-cursed world there is so much of sorrow and sad- 
ness and weariness. Oh, how weary we are at times! It 
does seem that life simply means to get up early in the 
morning and work and work until late at night; begin 
early in life and work and work just as long as we have 
any strength left; and sometimes, with these pains and 
sicknesses, and with wanting bread in the home and with 
a lack of clothing for the children, many are going out 
and you can read upon their faces, "Oh, that I could find 
rest!" How many a poor mother is battling in her home 
and we do not give her credit for what she deserves. Oh, 
that she could find some rest. We talk about the martyrs 
of old and the battles that have been fought for our coun- 
try, but when I tell you that right in our own city this 
week, a woman glad to get a moment down on her knees in 
prayer, was kicked out by her ungodly husband, there 
was a battle in that woman's breast and in her home that 
many people never dream of, and the cry and sigh go 
toward heaven every day from many a home, "Ok, tkat 
I migkt find rest!" But tkanks be to God, tke Epipkany 
of tkis morning's lesson leads us up to a keaven wkere 
tkere is rest. "And many skall come from tke east and 
west and skall sit down witk Abraham, and Isaac, and 
Jacob, in the kingdom of heaven." How glorious! Oh, 
tired soul, there is rest for you. There is a time coming 
when you may sit down with God. 

It is not only an Epipkany of rest, but it is an 
Epkipkany of ckaracter. I wisk every one of you would 
take kome tkese few lines and ever remember tkem. I 
believe I kave quoted tkem before: 

"Wealth lost — nothing lost; 
Health lost — something lost; 
Character lost — much lost ; 
Heaven lost — all lost " 



174 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

Some people think wealth is everything, but it is noth- 
ing; some people think very little of their health, but it 
is more than wealth; some people have very little idea 
of the value of character, but it is more than health. 
"Character lost — much lost," but I call your attention 
to the fact that when you get up there to the throne of 
God, you will find character as you never found it before. 
Jesus Christ did not say, "Many shall come from the east 
and west and sit down with Saul, or Judas Iscariot, or 
with the ungodly rulers of Home," but they shall sit down 
with good, old, faithful Abraham; they shall sit down 
with God-fearing Isaac; they shall sit down with well 
tried Jacob; they shall sit down with men like this cen- 
turion, a noble ruler, a man of great character. Let us 
not for a single moment imagine that only poor silly 
women and poor silly men go to heaven. The fact is that 
wise men came from the east to find Jesus. The fact is 
that wise people are worshipping the true and living God, 
while fools lose their souls. There is character in heaven. 
And not only do we find an Epiphany of character, but 
we also find and Ephiphany of recognition, and to me that 
is a wonderful comfort, and I hope it will be to you. We 
have the names here of three men well known in history, 
but you can not find a photograph in this world that 
tells you how Abraham looked; you cannot find in this 
world a single likeness of Isaac; if any man were to meet 
Jacob to-day on the street he would not know him; but 
up there you will know Abraham; up there you will know 
Isaac; up there you will know Jacob, up there you will 
know the ruler from Capernaum, and as I look this morn- 
ing by the light of my Savior into that heavenly abode 
above, I notice that every widow in this house, if she has 
her husband there, shall know him; and every husband 
in this house, if he goes there and his wife is there, shall 
know her; and it is a comfort to me to know that when 
you go there and I go there, we shall know father, we shall 
know mother, we shall know that little daughter, we shall 
know that little son, and we shall know that babe. Oh! 
Glorious Epiphany! That is why we have this morning 



THIRD SUNDAY AFTER EPIPHANY. 175 

a view into that heavenly home above which Jesus pointed 
out when He cried, "Which way?" 

2. In order that we may know which way, He turns 
our attention once into another direction of eternity. "But 
the children of the kingdom shall be cast out into outer 
darkness, and there shall be weeping and gnashing of 
teeth." The first view into this other way gives us a great 
surprise. As a rule we are inclined to think that hell 
shall be filled with ungodly heathen and with people who 
were never church members, etc. My friends, the Bible 
passage before us this morning is perfectly silent about 
what shall become of the heathen and what shall become 
of those people who never heard of Jesus. There are other 
passages of the Scripture that tell us plainly that they 
must be born t again, and that no one can enter heaven 
except by the name of Jesus Christ, but we are told in 
this Epiphany lesson this morning that when we look 
toward hell, or if we should ever enter there, the first 
view will be a great surprise — and what will it be? We 
will find children of the kingdom there. Children of the 
kingdom! We will find Jews there; we will find once 
professed Christians there; we will find hypocrites there; 
we will find a certain class of heathen there. 

I would have you first of all notice these children of the 
kingdom. Here is a class of people starting a church in 
Mansfield who reject their Savior, Jesus Christ, and they 
think that this minister of the First English Lutheran 
Church is about the most narrow-minded man on earth, 
because he does not want his choir to help them sing in 
a church that rejects his Savior. If I understand the Word 
of God, it states here just as clearly and plainly as language 
can, that these very Jews who reject their Savior "shall 
be cast out into outer darkness, and there shall be weep- 
ing and gnashing of teeth," if they do not repent and ac- 
cept their Savior; and shall Christian people help along 
a class of people who reject your Savior and mine? There 
is absolutely no hope for any Jew who rejects the Savior 
to reach heaven. He may be a good neighbor; he may be 
a splendid business man; he may be as fine a citizen from 



176 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

a worldly standpoint as any one else, and his soul'is just 
as valuable as mine, but I say to you this morning that 
if any Jew on earth does not repent and accept the Lord 
Jesus Christ before he dies, and if I should forsake my 
Savior, that Jew and I together will be in hell, and there 
is no question about it. These are the words, not of any 
man, nor of any school of theology, they are the words of 
the only Savior, Jesus Christ. 

This is just as true of the professed Christian who will 
go back from his church and from the means of Grace into 
the world again; it is just as true of the hypocrite who 
has his name on the church record, but does not love his 
Lord and Master, and has not given his heart and soul 
to Him; it is just as true of the heathen if he hears the 
Gospel and does not accept it. My dear Christian friends, 
let us not forget this morning that one of the first views 
into this great eternity of hell is that there will be many 
children of the kingdom there. 

Another thought that we must not forget is this : There 
will be outer darkness. You will remember that in the 
tabernacle there was a Holy of Holies, then a Holy Place 
and then the court around it, and in the Holy Place stood 
the candles burning day and night; there never was any 
darkness in the Holy Place, but out in the court it was dark, 
and further away it was still darker, and that picture 
throws light on the lesson of the morning. There are 
some people in the house of God with the lamp of the 
Word in their presence burning perpetually, and they can 
not be in the dark. There are others who will not stay 
with the light and they go out into the dark. Then there 
are others who try to get away just as far as they can 
from the light, and they are in outer darkness, and we 
learn from these words that in hell there is absolutely 
no hope of escape. In this world we often find misery; 
we find some very ungodly people, and we sometimes won- 
der why it is that the Lord spares them another week, 
another month and another year, but just as long as a 
man breathes in this world there is still hope that in some 
way or other the providential hand of God will bring 
him and the Word together, and open his heart to see 



THIRD SUNDAY AFTER EPIPHANY. 177 

the only Savior; there is still a little light; but when a 
man has passed beyond the gates of this life into darkness, 
he goes out into outer darkness? where there is no hope 
of ever seeing another ray of light. We heard a few Sun- 
days ago of that awful weeping when Herod ordered the 
little children slaughtered in Bethlehem; we heard how 
that cry was heard away up in Rama, a distance of seven 
or eight miles. We have recently heard of that awful 
catastrophe which took place in Chicago. It seemed to 
me in the past week that I could hear not only five hun- 
dred or six hundred fathers and mothers, but 1iYe or six 
hundred families, with all their relatives, moaning and 
crying, until we have thought we heard the cry at Rama 
again, but I call your attention to the fact that the 
Epiphany lesson this morning, which asks us to look out 
into eternity, not only toward heaven but down toward 
hell, shows us a weeping such as never can be heard on 
earth, "But the children of the kingdom shall be cast out 
into outer darkness, and there shall be weeping and gnash- 
ing of teeth." When the teeth begin to clatter, there is 
pain somewhere. You may ask what kind of fire there 
is in hell. I do not know whether there is any literal fire 
at all or not; all I know is this, that there is a some- 
thing there and Jesus says, "The smoke of their torment 
ascendeth up forever and ever." "Why," says some one, 
"how can there be fire there, and still be total darkness?" 
My friend, if I were to put you into a cell so totally dark 
that you could not see a ray of light, and put an electric 
wire in your hand, it would burn you to death and you 
would not see a spark. The question with me is not what 
kind of fire, but I do know from God's Word that there is 
a place where there is torment — where there is no hope 
of escape; I know there is a place where men and women 
are gnashing their teeth, and I can easily understand why 
they do it. I believe just as surely as I am standing here 
to-day that there will be fathers in hell who will gnash 
their teeth at themselves for having driven their children 
to hell; I believe there will be mothers there who will gnash 
their teeth at their husbands and say, "Why did you by 
your ungodly life bring yourself here and me also? T could 



178 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

gnash my teeth at you." I believe there will be children 
there who will gnash their teeth at their parents and say, 
"Why did you let us grow up in our ungodly natures and 
let us choose for ourselves, when you knew that we did 
not know how to choose?" This gnashing is going to take 
place, not only by heathen, but by children of the king- 
dom. I believe there will be ministers of the Gospel there 
who will gnash their teeth at themselves and at each other 
and say, "Why did we mislead these people and fail to warn 
them, and tell them that the Bible is a lie and that Jesus' 
words are not true?" 

These are pictures that Epiphany is giving us. In 
this season we have our thoughts turned to missionary 
work, but how can we ever have the missionary spirit if 
we believe that the words of Jesus are not true — if we 
believe that the Word of God is not true — if we believe 
that every man will be saved whether he dies a child of 
God or a child of the devil? If I believed that kind of 
nonsense I would never give another cent for missionaries; 
I would quit preaching the Gospel and try to down the 
missionary spirit; and the very reason there is so little 
done for the saving of souls to-day all over the world, is 
because this Satanic Universalist spirit has come into our 
liearts, and we seem to think that no difference how a man 
lives, he is going to get to heaven any way. It is a lie! 

II. 

Which Way? It seems to me with these two eternities 
before you, there ought to be no question which way. The 
Savior not only asked you to look out into eternity, but 
He says, "Come, and look down at life!" 

1. We are not even free from hell here — why deny 
hell in eternity? Look at the sin — look at the sickness 
— look at the torment — look at the rebellion that you 
find in this world. "And behold, there came a leper and 
worshipped Him, saying, 'Lord, if Thou wilt, Thou canst 
make me clean.' " How does it come that this leper was 
unclean? God did not create lepers — God did not create 
unclean people. What is the trouble? No man can look 



THIRD SUNDAY AFTER EPIPHANY. 179 

around and see the sin in this world without noticing that 
it is a reflection of that eternity into which we just looked. 

Look at the sickness! sickness everywhere. A great 
many people tell us that sickness is of the devil. That 
is true; there would be no sickness without the devil, but 
it is a mistake to think that those who are sick are chil- 
dren of the devil, and those who are not sick are not chil- 
dren of the devil. Some of the most ungodly people on 
earth have the best of health, and some of the best saints 
living on earth to-day are poor, crippled people lying at 
death's door. To show you that sickness to-day is not a 
necessary proof of being a wicked person, I call your at- 
tention to the fact that when the Savior healed the man 
brought to Him on his bed, He did not say first of all, 
"Be well," but "Thy sins be forgiven thee," and when 
his sins were forgiven he was still a sick man, and I do 
not know but that the man would have died in his sick- 
ness if the people had not thought that Jesus could not 
forgive sins, and so He says, "I say unto you, Arise, and take 
up thy bed, and walk." The man was healed spiritually 
while his body was still sick, and that is the mistake of 
Dowieism — they seem to think that if a man is sick he 
is simply of the devil. Every saint on earth gets sick be- 
fore he dies. We nearly all pass into this great eternity 
through sickness. Sickness is a proof, nevertheless, that 
there is a something here that is a reflection of a great 
something beyond. 

Not only have we sin here, and sickness, but we have 
torment! "And when Jesus was entered into Capernaum, 
there came unto Him a centurion, beseeching Him, and 
saying, Lord, my servant lieth at home sick of the palsy, 
grievously tormented" — that awful disease of palsy where 
every vein became a fiery road for the steed of pain to 
gallop on. The poor servant lay there, and the general of 
the army, although a ruler of Rome, could do nothing for 
the poor suffering servant; the doctors could help him 
nothing ; there stood the surgeons, but with all their power 
they could do nothing. The poor servant cried out, "Oh, 
help! help! help!" and when men once discover, as we 
all shall discover, that we can do nothing, then they seek 



180 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

the Lord. There was a notice given to these people that 
out beyond the waters there is a Savior of the world — 
a man who can heal the leper — a man who has just 
preached the most wonderful Sermon on the Mount ever 
preached — a man who can say to a decaying leper, "Be 
clean," and he was clean — if we just had Him here, there 
would be help for this poor tormented soul ! Dear friends, 
we need not go to Capernaum to find torment. I could, 
within five minutes' time, take you into a home in our own 
city, where for G.Ye or six long weeks some of us have been 
compelled to look upon a sickness that is actual torment. 
Tell me not that is not a reflection of something beyond; 
tell me not there is no eternity of pain when even in this 
world Christians as well as ungodly people must pass 
through fires. 

Look at the rebellion we find here. "And Jesus saith 
unto him (the leper) 'See thou tell no man; but go thy 
way, shew thyself to the priest and offer the gift that Moses 
commanded, for a testimony unto them.' " You will re- 
member it was a custom that just as soon as a leper was 
healed he was required to go and perform his duty in the 
presence of the priest. It was a law of God. Jesus wanted 
this law obeyed and tells this leper to go; but Mark tells 
us in the first chapter that this same leper, the moment 
he was healed, instead of going, as Jesus told him, to 
the priest, began to blaze the matter abroad, disobeying 
the command of Jesus. In other words, he proved, after 
all, to be a leper. I do not say that in that case it was 
just exactly rebellion in the worst sense. When the Lord 
Jesus Christ told one after the other, as He healed them, 
not to tell any one, it was more from the standpoint of not 
making a public demonstration than anything else; never- 
theless, the fact that this young man did not carry out 
the Savior's command was an evidence of the rebellion 
in the heart of man to-day. Oh, how much rebellion there 
is everywhere against God's holy laws! If we obeyed the 
laws of God there would not be a family in Mansfield who 
would not be in church somewhere. "Kemember the Sab- 
bath day to keep it holy" does not mean to live at home like 
a heathen. Oh, what rebellion everywhere! — what re- 



THIRD SUNDAY AFTER EPIPHANY. L81 

bellion against the command to honor our parents! — what 
rebellion against the command, "Thou shalt not kill!" — 
what rebellion against the command, "Thou shalt not com- 
mit adultery!" — what rebellion, oh, thieves, against the 
command, "Thou shalt not steal!" — what rebellion, oh, 
liars, against the command "Thou shalt not bear false 
witness against thy neighbor" — what rebellion, oh, Jews 
of Jerusalem ! He cried over thee, "How often I would have 
gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth 
her chickens under her wings, and ye would not" — yes, 
stubborn rebels, ye would not. This rebellion shows, dear 
friends, that we are not free from hell even here on earth. 

2. Which way? Look around on the other side — 
there is also Heaven, not very far away, here on earth. 
We have God's Word. When the centurion came to Jesus, 
either personally or through a messenger, Jesus said, "I 
will come down and heal him." "Oh," said the centurion, 
"that is not necessary. I am a general; I have an hun- 
dred soliders under me; I say to one soldier, 'Go,' and he 
goes; I say to another, 'Come/ and he comes; I say to a 
third, 'Do this/ and he does it." Total obedience. "I am 
only lord of a hundred men; thou art the Lord of heaven 
and earth; thou dost not need to come down; speak the 
word and my servant shall be healed." That Word of God 
was spoken and the servant was healed. The very fact 
that I hold in my hand this morning the Word of God, is 
a demonstration that heaven is not far away. It may be 
past yonder stars and zones of stars and whirling world 
systems; it may be ten thousand times further away than 
any telescope ever penetrated the skies, but despite all 
that, I hold in my hand the flame from heaven, It is not 
far away. 

We not only have the Word of God here, but we have 
faith here. When this poor leper came to his Lord and 
said, "If thou wilt Thou canst make me clean," there was 
faith in that heart. When this great general came from 
Capernaum to the Savior and said, "If Thou wilt but speak 
the word, my servant shall be healed," Jesus Christ looked 
at him and said, "I have not found so great faith, no, not 
in Israel" — a marvelous faith — a faith like that of the 



182 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

Syrophenician woman, who held to the crumbs and got 
the bread. When we remember that man in his natural 
state has no faith; when we remember that these things 
in the Word of God are foolishness to the natural man, 
the very fact that I have before me this morning men, 
women and children listening to the old story as if you 
never heard it before, is evidence that down in your hearts 
there is a something that does not come from the sun, 
moon or stars; there is something that does not come from 
hell — it came from heaven. Heaven is not so far away! 

Not only have we faith here, but we have also salva- 
tion. "And Jesus put forth His hand and touched him, 
saying, 'I will. Be thou clean,' and immediately his leprosy 
was cleansed." And, again, it is said of the Centurion: 
"And Jesus said unto the centurion, 'Go thy way; and as 
thou hast believed, so be it done unto thee; and his servant 
was healed in the salfsame hour." One thing we must 
not overlook. Jesus never healed a man's body without 
saving his soul. Never. There is Salvation here, and when 
we are saved, we are saved from something, and by some 
one, and for something. When I look around me again 
and see these immortal souls hungering and thirsting for 
righteousness, I can say from the bottom of my heart: "I 
believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and 
earth, and in Jesus Christ His only Son, and in the Holy 
Spirit," as we confess in the Apostles' Creed, and I know 
if I were to ask you, every Christian in this house to-day 
would join with me, and we cannot prayerfully confess 
that unless we have salvation. 

And, having salvation, how do we get it, if it does 
not come from above? "Every good and perfect gift cometh 
from the Father of lights." Having then this great sal- 
vation, I say to-day, Look out, now, not only into eternity 
— and we have not only an eternity in hell — but come 
on down and look at this life, and look at the fact that we 
are not free from hell here, and heaven is not very far 
away. 

III. 

One more Epiphany, which comes closer to ourselves. 
We now stand, and lo and behold, here is Satan — and 



THIRD SUNDAY AFTER EPIPHANY. L83 

liere the only Savior of the world. Here is Satan, and what 
does he want to do? He wants to damn the Jews and he 
wants to damn the Christians; he wants to damn the hypo- 
crites and he wants to damn the heathen. "When we looked 
out and saw children of the kingdom over there, my dear 
friends, did we not remember that they are also here, and 
would they ever have gone over there if it had not been that 
they were prepared here? Children of the kingdom, let 
me warn you this morning, if you think that no one is 
watching for your souls to damn them, you are mistaken; 
if you think that because you are a member of the Chris- 
tian Church that therefore you are perfectly safe, that 
you will have no trials any more and no temptations any 
more and you do not need to look for any, Oh, beware! 
It is said by Dr. Luther that wherever the children of God 
build a temple, Satan builds his chapel right beside it, 
and I believe there is a great truth expressed in those few 
words. Wherever you find a professed people of God, you 
will find that Satan is going to do his work, and if he 
can just continue to keep the Jews believing either that 
the Savior will yet come, or, as most of them believe, that 
it is all simply a sham and He never will come, he has 
won the victory. 

Look down — do not simply look out. God wants to 
give you an honest Epiphany this morning. "The chil- 
dren of the kingdom shall be cast out." What the Jew 
was to that kingdom is what your boys and girls are this 
morning to the Christian Church. How many young men 
and young women will have to acknowledge that father 
was a good Christian, or mother was a good Christian, or, 
if you cannot say that, you can at least go back and say, 
Grandfather was a good Christian, or Grandmother was a 
good Christian, but what are you — a child of the king- 
dom? — you, with Godly relatives in the past, living your 
ungodly lives? Epiphany! See yourselves already in the 
hands of Satan! Do you know where you are going? 
Which way? Which way? 

2. I call your attention to the fact this morning that 
while you are standing here, you are not standing alone. 
This whole text tells me that Jesus is hqre. In the midst 



184 THE GREAT .GOSPEL. 

of all these sufferings once stood Jesus the Savior, and 
He triumphed. Therefore I would have you understand 
that you can come to Him. This man who was a leper, 
according to the law of Israel, would have had to stand 
off in the distance, hold up his hands, and cry, "Unclean! 
Unclean!" He could not have gone to another citizen in 
Israel without having been taken by the government and 
sent out in some lonely place where he could never reach 
another man, — but he sees the Lord of Heaven. Law 
now or no law — an immortal soul will sometimes go away 
above human laws — he runs into the presence of his Mas- 
ter, and his Master goes to him. 

In other words, I tell you Jesus Christ went to the 
leper — He did not go away from him. And when this 
ruler from Capernaum came and said that his servant 
was lying at the point of death, Jesus said, "I will come 
down and heal him," and so this Savior of the world this 
morning is ready to say to every one of us, "I will conue 
to you — I will come to your home — I will come to your 
soul — I want you saved." Which way? Which way this 
morning? 

He not only says He will come to you, but He says, 
"You may come to Me." As I said a moment ago, it was 
against all the laws of Israel that this poor leper should 
come into the presence of other men, but Jesus not only 
allowed him to come into His presence, not only walked 
up to him, but listen, "And Jesus put forth His hand and 
touched him, saying, 'I will; be thou clean.'" Wonderful 
touch! It was the law of that country and the experience 
of lepers that when they touched a man who was clean, 
the clean man became unclean — and here comes a leper, 
unclean, and is touched by the clean hand of Jesus, and 
instead of Jesus Christ becoming a leper, the leper became 
like Jesus. Wonderful transformation of the body and 
soul. The cleansing hand of God cleanses everything that 
it touches. Are you touched this morning by the hand of 
Jesus? Which way? 

He not only touches, but this wonderful Savior cleanses. 
"And immediately his leprosy was cleansed." "And his 
servant was healed in the selfsame hour" — and so the 



THIRD SUNDAY AFTER EPIPHANY. 1 <Sf) 

Lord God, when He comes to us and touches us with His 
hand of mercy, cleanses us. It may be there is some one 
listening- to me this morning who feels in his own heart, 
"I am that leper; I am far more wicked than you know 
of." A dear friend came to me the other day and said, 
"There is not a law of God that I have not broken," and I am 
always glad to hear a young man make an honest confession, 
because I can come with some comfort, because Jesus Christ 
came to seek and to save that which was lost. The reason 
some people never will be saved is because they do not know 
their lost condition. When they once realize they need 
the Savior, the Savior comes and touches them, and lifts 
them up, and, with a love I cannot express, He comes 
to seek and to save that which was lost. Wonderful 
Epiphany! Which way? Which way? 

It seems to me there is only one answer to this great 
question. The Avay is to repent of our sins. The way 
is to go and study the Ten Commandments and hold them 
up to our souls until we find out that we are lost and 
condemned. Repent of our sins, and believe in Jesus Christ, 
and be baptized in the name of the Father, Son and Holy 
Ghost, and then to bring our children to Jesus and keep 
them with Him, and have the missionary spirit in our souls 
to save the world. That is the way. It does my soul 
good to see these little children crowd the galleries this 
morning. There is the hope of the Church. There is where 
we must begin to plant the good seed of the Word of God. 
I hope to see the day when the parents of this wmole con- 
gregation will put a hymn-book into the hands of each of 
the children, and the children can say, "I saw you at church 
this morning, mother," or, "I saw you at church this morn- 
ing, father," and the parents can say, "Dear children, we 
saw you there." These children understand this ser- 
mon this morning just as well as you aged people do. 
Oh, that we all had the spirit that the poor Indian woman 
had, of whom I read one time in the history of our own 
country. An Indian woman was led to the knowledge of 
her Savior, and when very sick, just before her death, she 
fell into an unconscious state and it was supposed for a 
moment she w r as dead, but suddenly she rose up and said, 



186 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

"Lord, just a little yet — just a little yet — just wait until 
1 take all the Indians with nie." Oh, that we all had that 
desire! Which way? The way of the children of God! 
Amen. 

PRAYER. 

We ask Thy divine blessing, O Lord and Master, upon these words so 
precious to our souls. We pray Thee that Thou wilt give us that spirit from 
on high that will give us a deeper insight into the eternity of life and into 
the responsibility of each hour. O Lord God, we thank Thee, for the feel- 
ing of love and harmony and thankfulness for Thy Word that exists in our 
midst at this hour ; we pray Thee for a perpetual Pentecost for a constant 
winning of souls on the part of Thy people, to serve Thee, and have others 
come into like service. We pray Thee to continue Thy kingdom around this 
world from which many shall come from the east and west and sit down 
with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. O Lord God, give us all that can be 
given to live the Christian life that it is Thy desire that we should live here 
on earth. We ask it all in the name of Jesus, who not only knew Himself, 
better than man, how to pray, but also taught us to say : 

Our Father, who art in heaven ; Hallowed be Thy name ; Thy kingdom 
come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven ; Give us this day our 
daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass 
against us. Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil ; for Thine 
is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever and ever. Amen. 



FOURTH SUNDAY AFTER EPIPHANY. 



A TERRIBLE TEMPEST. 



H' 



Matt. 8 : 23-27. 

M I f ND when He was entered into a ship, His disciples followed Him. 
And, behold, there arose a great tempest in the sea, insomuch 
that the ship was covered with the waves ; but He was asleep. 
And His disciples came to Him, and awoke Him, saying, 'Lord, save us, 
we perish.' And He saith unto them, 'Why are ye fearful, O ye of little 
faith?' Then He arose and rebuked the winds and the sea and there was 
a great calm. But the men marvelled, saying, 'What manner of man is 
this, that even the winds and the sea obey Him?' " 

O God, Our Heavenly Father, without Thee we can do nothing. Thou 
who didst still the tempest, and Thou who art to-day permitting the rain to 
fall from the heavens upon the earth to wash the cities and to cleanse all 
around us, cleanse us of all unrighteousness, and to-day say to all our hearts 
where there are storms, "Peace, be still." Amen. 



Dear Christian Friends : — 

Ever since sin entered the world there have been 
storms — external and internal storms. Sin brought 
a storm into the hearts and souls of the first sin- 
ners, and you will remember that the Lord God 
said of the earth, that it is cursed on account of that 
sin. From that day to this sin has been having its effect 
on man and on all nature. Jesus has manifested Himself 
unto us as the Kedeemer of man. We have mentioned 
Him as He showed Himself to the Wise Men of the East; 
as He manifested Himself to the Doctors of Divinity; as 
He manifested Himself to heaven and hell and showed 
to us that view of eternity; and now, in this morning's 
lesson, He manifests Himself as the great Kedeemer of 
man, and as the stiller of all earthly storms. In other 

187 



188 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

words, we find Him a Master of the winds and waves as 
well as of mankind. I invite your attention then this morn- 
ing to 

A TERRIBLE TEMPEST. 

Notice: 

I. The smaller elements. 
II. The larger elements. 

I. 

When we read this lesson carefully we observe that there 
are five smaller elements and five larger elements. 

1. In this Terrible Tempest we have, first, A little sea. 
- — The Sea of Galilee lying three hundred feet below the sur- 
face of the ocean, surrounded with volcanic mountains, with 
Tabor to the south, covered with oaks, and Hermon to the 
north, covered with her snow-capped garments — there lies 
the little sea only about thirteen miles long and seven miles 
wide, usually calm. The Savior is about to cross this 
little sea to go over where the Gadarenes lived, and, in the 
midst, is caught in a great tempest. The sea itself is so 
small that it would easily be lost like a drop in the At- 
lantic or Pacific, or any great ocean. 

2. We have not only a small sea, but we have a 
small ship, or, as Mark tells us, ships; the little ships 
were about to start across; the Savior went on the only 
one that Matthew thinks worth while mentioning, while 
Mark tells us there were other little ships crossing this 
little sea. It could not have been a large vessel — it would 
not take even one large vessel to carry twelve passengers. 
If these twelve were in several little boats they must have 
been very small. Think of that little ship crossing the 
little sea. 

3. And while looking at the ship, do not forget to look 
back and see that little pillow. The Savior had just 
preached the wonderful Sermon on the Mount, the multi- 
tude pressed around Him until He felt driven away from 
this vast multitude to find a little rest. One young man 
said, "I will follow Thee — I will go wherever Thou goest," 
but Jesus was so tired that he said, "The foxes have holes 



FOURTH SUNDAY AFTER EPIPHANY. L89 

and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man 
hath not where to lay His head." Oh, how tired he was! 
and as soon as he stepped into the little ship on the little 
sea, He laid His head down, as Mark tells, on the little 
"pillow" — not His pillow — on a borrowed pillow — the 
Son of God, who owned the heavens and the earth, so poor 
that He had no pillow of His own! 

4. We find in this Terrible Tempest not only a small 
pillow but a small faith. To us it does not seem so small,, 
when we remember that the storm came down upon those 
little ships, and the water began to come in large crests 
and covered those little vessels; when we remember that 
the water began to gather into these little vessels, as Mark 
tells us, until they were almost full; when we remeuiber 
that these disciples did not disturb the sleeping Master 
until they felt compelled to do so; when they remained 
silent until it seemed as though the vessel were going 
down, then they went to Him and said, "Master! Master! 
We perish! " "Carest Thou not that we perish?" "Lord 
save us or we perish," as the different evangelists put it. 
Then He rises and rebukes them and says, "O ye of little 
faith!" To us it does not seem that that was such a little 
faith, when they kept silent until the little ship was full 
of water; we would naturally suppose that was a large 
faith, and yet Jesus calls it little faith. They forgot that 
Jesus was sleeping in that little ship. They forgot that 
the Almighty could not be pushed down even by a terri- 
ble tempest. 

5. So the little faith, and the little pillow, and the 
little ship and the little sea were all there, and am I wrong 
when I say that even the little Son of Man was there? 
We are told by one of the great German poets that on 
that day "the very Gem of the Ocean was carrying the 
Diamond of heaven." When you stop to think that the 
Lord God who made heaven and earth was lying in that 
little ship on the little sea on the little pillow, is it not 
wonderful? Is it as wonderful as it was to find Him 
sleeping in the little crib at Bethlehem? Here we see that 
Jesus was man, tired, sleepy, sleeping like a babe in the 
end of that little ship, and let us not forget that our 



190 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

Savior was the God-man; let us not forget that He was 
sleepy and tired and hungry like other men; that He mani- 
fested Himself to us then not simply as divine, but as 
human. 

II. In contrast to these smaller elements, let us look 
at the larger elements of this terrible tempest. 

1. Luther has correctly said that this little ship and the 
little sea are a picture of the great Church of God. That the 
little sea itself is the world, and that the Savior of the world 
in that little ship is the Lord with His holy sacraments 
in the Church. In other words, if you look into that little 
ship you will find Jesus is there; when He speaks to 
the winds and the waves, you find the Word of God in 
that little ship; and when you see the water in there, you 
find the water and the Word as you find it in the Holy 
Sacrament here in the Church of God. So that little ship 
is not so small after all — it represents that great Church 
which Jesus Christ bought with His blood; it represents 
that little Church which many a time has lived through 
the terrible tempest in the history of the world; it rep- 
resents that little ship which has been many a time swung 
from one side to the other by the terrible tempests that 
have beaten upon it. That little ship that day was greater 
than the Sea of Galilee; that little ship that day was 
greater than the Holy Land ; that little ship that day was 
greater than the Atlantic Ocean; that little ship that day 
day was so great that it contained Him who made the 
heavens and the earth! How could that be a small ship? 
It was the Church of God — the great Church! 

2. Not only was it a great Church, but it was a great 
storm. We are told by Luke that the storm came down upon 
them. You will remember, as I said a moment ago, 
this little sea lies three hundred feet below the level 
of the sea; it lies there between great volcanic moun- 
tains, with Tabor on the south and Hermon on the north; 
when the storms did come, they came down through that 
gulley over the top of the mountain, as though they dashed 
down up them. We have a picture then of the great storm 
that did not come from the east nor from the west, it 
did not come from the north nor from the south, but came 



FOURTH SUNDAY AFTER EPIPHANY. 191 

down upon them. It was not only a great storm because 
it came down, but we are told by Mark and by Matthew 
that the waves so rolled that they dashed over their little 
ship. The storm was around them on every side; there 
were those big billows rolling and rolling over them; some- 
times the little keel seemed to go down and plow the very 
bottom of the sea; other times it rose up high until it 
seemed to pierce the very darkness of the clouds above. It 
was a wonderful storm — a great tempest ! 

This great tempest, I say, was not only around them, 
but in them as well. It was an external and an internal 
storm. These disciples had been on that little sea many 
a time before; they had rowed over these waves before, 
but they never saw anything just like this. There was a 
commotion in their hearts that made them fear and trem- 
ble; they did not want to wake up the sleeping Savior, 
and yet they could stand it no longer, and there, when 
the tempest within was as great as the tempest without, 
they walked back to the little pillow where the Savior 
was sleeping, and Mark tells us they cried out, "Master! 
Master! We perish!" Luke says, "Carest Thou not that 
we perish?" and Matthew tells us they cried out, "Lord, 
save us or we perish !" These are only the little waves that 
you see from the great storm that was raging in the hearts 
of these disciples. 

3. Not only was there a great storm and a great 
Church on that sea that day, but there was a great enemy 
there. You will not forget, my friends, the history of Job 
when the Lord God gave Satan an opportunity to take 
anything but the life of Job, that one of the things he 
did was to bring forth a mighty storm — a storm that de- 
stroyed his house and home. Let us not forget that in 
another place we are told that Satan is "the prince of the 
power of the air." Eph. 2, 2. If we think for a single 
moment that all these great calamities are caused simply 
by God's direction, we are mistaken. God allows them. 
God allows Satan at times to rage in the storm, and I 
am satisfied, as I study this history of Jesus Christ in 
that little vessel, that the same Satan who just before 
this had told the Savior to throw Himself from the pin- 



192 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

nacle of the temple in order that He might dash Him- 
self to death and fail, now made up his mind, "This is 
the time for me to push this little vessel under the 
water." We are told in the verses just previous to our 
text that the Savior had been casting out devils. "And 
when even w r as come, they brought unto Him many that 
w^ere possessed with devils; and He cast out the spirits 
with His Word, and healed all that were sick." And 
when the healing was done and the devils cast out, Jesus, 
stepped into the little ship — what does Satan make up 
his mind to do? He says, "I will bring a storm down that 
will strike that vessel to the bottom of the sea, and see if 
I cannot destroy His life." Jesus said of the devil, "He is 
a liar and a murderer from the beginning," and if there 
is anything that Satan does love, it is lying and bringing 
people to death. He said, "This is my opportunity ; this 
is my time; the Savior is sleeping and does not recognize 
the storm; I will drive the little vessel down to the bot- 
tom and that will be the end of Him." There was a great 
enemy there that day. He tried his best to destroy the 
disciples as w-ell as their Savior; it was his time to try 
to drive the little Church out of existence, if he possibly 
could. 

4. Not only w T as there a great enemy there; not only 
was there a great Church and a great storm there, but the 
Son of God was there. Notice when Jesus arises from 
His sleep He says to the winds and the storm, "Peace;" 
then the waves kept on rolling as they usually do after 
a storm is past, and He said to them, "Be still" — and 
there was a great calm. Who can hear these words of the 
Lord Jesus Christ on that little ship, without recognizing 
that the little God-man is the great Son of God? Who 
can hear these words without finding that the little One 
who slept on the pillow is after all the One who holds the 
pillars of the earth on the ends of His fingers? When 
the winds and the storms obey, they obey God. And so 
Satan, great as he may be, and though his intention was 
to drown the little Church, finds himself, after all, con- 
fronted by the same voice that drove out the devils and 
healed the sick. It is the voice of the great Son of God. 



FOURTH SUNDAY AFTER EPIPHANY. 193 

5. We have therefore, not only the great Son of God 
in the elements of this terrible tempest, but we have also 
the great calm that comes alone from His voice. 

I wish you would picture that scene there again. The 
storm is raging. Who can still that storm? None but the 
voice of God. The storm is still, but you know that after 
a storm on the ocean the waters are wild sometimes even 
for twenty-four hours. Jesus not only calmed that storm, 
but He calmed every wave. Not only was it true that the 
Sea of Galilee w T as quiet again, but it was quieter than 
usual. There was a great calm! There you have a pic- 
ture of the Lord Jesus Christ, how He comes to us, and 
pronounces to the poor sinner forgiveness and peace, and' 
when we have justification by faith without the deeds of 
the law, then we can look up into the eyes of our Father 
in heaven, in the name of Jesus Christ and can call Him 
Father, and have a peace in our souls that we can get no- 
where else. 

Dear friends, there are storms in life to-day as well 
as there were on that little Sea of Galilee. There are 
heart storms; there are mental storms; there are soul 
storms; there are storms without of all kinds, but let us 
not forget that on this sea of life, in this little ship of the 
Church of God, we are perfectly safe, when we remember 
that Jesus is here. And Jesus is with us now. We may 
think that we are a small congregation now, but we 
are many times more than in that little Church on the 
Sea of Galilee. The Lord God is in our midst and we 
are perfectly safe if we will simply remember that Jesus 
is here. The little ship cannot go down with Jesus in 
it — do not forget that — and one difference between the 
old Church of the Keformation and many other churches 
is this, that we are in the ship while the others are hang- 
ing on the outside; we are in the Word of God; we have 
it in its purity, and we thank God for the pure Word in 
the little ship in which He sleeps. 

Sometimes He seems to sleep. Sometimes it seems as 
though He had forgotten us. When John the Baptist was 
lying in prison and Jesus Christ had not visited him for 
over a year, it seemed to him that Jesus was sleeping. In 



194 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

the days of persecution when thousands of people were 
dying in the fires, it did seem as though Jesus was sleep- 
ing; and, sometimes, in our history, when we wait, and 
wait, and wait for the storms to be calmed, and all seems 
to be so tempestuous, it does seem as though Jesus were 
sleeping. But it only seems so. Jesus is in the little ship, 
and when the time comes He will arise, and He will say, 
"Peace, be still/' and there will be a great calm. 

"Each petty hand can steer a ship becalmed 
But he that will govern her and carry her to her ends 
Must know his tides, his currents ; 
How to lift her sails; what she will bear in foul, 
What in fair weather ; what her springs are, 
Her leaks and how to stop them; what strands, 
What rocks do threaten her; 

The forces and the natures of all winds, gusts, storms and tempests ; 
When her keel ploughs hell and deck knocks heaven — 
Then to manage her becomes the name and office of a pilot." 

And that hand is the hand of the Son of God, who re- 
clined on the little pillow as the Son of man. May this 
God-man go with us then in the little Ship of Life unti) 
we reach the shore of life eternal. Amen. 



FIFTH SUNDAY AFTER EPIPHANY. 



THE HEAVENLY HARVEST. 



Matt. 13 : 24-30. 



H 



ii"Y^W NOTHER parable put He forth unto them saying, The kingdom of 
heaven is likened unto a man which sowed good seed in his field ; 
but while men slept his enemy came and sowed tares among the 
wheat, and went his way. But when the blade was sprung up, and brought 
forth fruit, then appeared the tares also. So the servants of the household 
came and said unto him, 'Sir, didst thou sow good seed in thy field? 
From whence then hath it tares?' He said unto them, 'An enemy hath done 
this.' The servants said unto him, 'Wilt thou then that we go and gather 
them up?' But he said, 'Nay; lest while ye gather up the tares, ye root 
up also the wheat with them. Let both grow together until the harvest; 
and in the time of the harvest I will say to the reapers, 'Gather ye together 
first the tares, and bind them in bundles to burn them; but gather the wheat 
into my barn.' " 

Matt. 13 : 36-43. "Then Jesus sent the multitude away, and went into 
the house ; and His disciples came to Him, saying, 'Declare unto us the par- 
able of the tares of the field.' And He answered and said unto them, 'He 
that soweth the good seed is the Son of man ; the field is the world ; the 
good seed are the children of the kingdom; but the tares are the children of 
the wicked one ; the enemy that sowed them is the devil ; the harvest is the 
end of the world; and the reapers are the angels. As therefore the tares 
are gathered and burned in the fire ; so shall it be in the end of this world. 
The Son of man shall send forth His angels, and they shall gather out of 
His kingdom all things that offend, and them which do iniquity ; and shall 
cast them into a furnace of fire ; there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth. 
Then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their 
Father. Who hath ears to hear, let him hear." 

Sanctify us, O Lord, through Thy truth; 
Thy Word is Truth. Amen. 



Beloved in Christ : — 

If we are true Christians we will pray every day, 
"Thy kingdom came." The kingdom of God is God's 
Church — on earth militant — above triumphant. This 

195 



196 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

Church of God on earth is called militant, be- 
cause it is a struggling Church — struggling with Satan 
— Struggling with the bad seed that he sows in the 
held, and that struggle goes on until the kingdom of this 
world shall have passed into the kingdom of glory, and 
the righteous shall shine as the sun in the presence of 
their Father. In other words, we have in this morning's 
Epiphany a lesson, a manifestation of the struggle that 
goes on in the field here until the great kingdom of glory 
shall appear in triumph above. I call your attention, then, 
this morning, to 

THE HEAVENLY HARVEST, 

and may God find you and me sheaves in this harvest when 
the end comes. Notice: 

I. The field. 

II. The first solving. 

III. The second sowing. 

IV. The season of rest. 
V. The sad discovery. 

VI. The harvest at last. 

I. The field belongs to the Lord Jesus Christ; it is the 
whole world; and it is this ivorld in which we live. 

1. "Another parable put He forth unto them, saying, 
'The kingdom of heaven is likened unto a man which sowed 
good seed in his field.' " And if you want to know who 
this One is who owns the field, remember the 37th verse: 
"He that soweth the good seed is the Son of man. 7 ' This 
field, then, belongs to the Lord Jesus Christ. It is true, 
we confess in the Apostles' Creed: "I believe in God the 
Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, 7 ' and you 
might gather the idea from that creed that this earth be- 
longs to the Father, and that the Son has nothing to 
do with it, but let us not forget that the Father said, 
"This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased; 77 and 
let us not forget that "God so loved the world that He 
gave His only begotten Son, That whosoever believeth in 
Him shall not perish, but have everlasting life 77 ; let us 
not forget of this same Son that "the Father hath com- 



FIFTH SUNDAY AFTER EPIPHANY. L9 i 

mitted all things into His hands"; let us not forget, there- 
fore, that the only heir in whom the Father is well pleased 
is now the sole owner of this earth on which we live. The 
held is His. There is not a foot of ground in this great 
world that does not belong to the Lord Jesus Christ. 

It is not only His field, but I say that the whole world 
is the field. In the thirty-eighth verse he says, "The field 
is the world." We use the word "world" sometimes re- 
ferring to ungodly people — they also are the world — 
but, on the other hand, this earth is the world. This earth, 
will all the people thereon, is a great field, and belongs to 
the Lord Jesus Christ. You remember that the Psalmist 
said, "The earth is the Lord's, and the fulness thereof." 
You will remember that Melchizedek, when he met Abraham 
after the battle near Sodom and Gomorrah, said, "Blessed 
be Abram of the Most High God, Possessor of heaven 
and earth." You will remember that God Himself said, 
in another place, "Ye are not your own; ye have been 
bought with a price." Everything then belongs to God. 
Every field in this great earth is God's field. 

And it is this earth we are speaking of. "As therefore 
the tares are gathered and burned in the fire, so shall 
it be in the end of this world." We are not talking now 
about people who may live on some other planet. This 
Word of God was given for people in this world, and there- 
fore the field lies before us to-day, as we heard last Sun- 
day, from the east and from the west, from the north and 
from the south, including every place where the footprint 
of man is found. If we will remember that this world is 
the Lord's field, we will begin to understand what the har- 
vest shall be. 

II. The first sowing took place in daylight, and it was 
done by the Son of God, and the seed that He sowed were 
the children of the kingdom. 

"The kingdom of heaven is likened unto a .man which 
sowed good seed in his field; but while men slept his enemy 
came and sowed tares among the whent, and went his 
way." 

If the enemy sowed the seed while men were sleeping, 
in the night time, it is more than probable that the Son 



198 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

of God sowed His seed in the daylight, and so He always 
has. One of the first words that came from the mouth of 
God was, "Let there be light; and there was light," and 
from that day to this God has been the Light of the World. 
In every passage of Scripture where we have any attribute 
given of God, it throws light on Him, as well as on all 
His creation. The Lord Jesus Christ in His Sermon on 
the Mount said, "No man lighteth a candle and putteth it 
under a bushel"; again He said, "No city built on a hill 
can be hid"; again, "Let your light so shine before men, 
that they may see your good works, and glorify your 
Father which is in heaven." On the other hand, the work 
of Satan, as we shall hear hereafter, is in the dark. Ee- 
member, then, that in this great Heavenly Harvest, the 
seed was not sown by night, but was sown in the light, 
and sown by Him who is the Light of the World. 

2. This sower was none other than God Himself. "And 
He answered and said unto them, 'He that soweth the 
good seed is the Son of man. 7 " Let us not forget that 
Jesus Christ is the Word of God, and let us not forget 
that this Word became flesh, and that without Him was 
not anything made that was made. Jesus Christ is the 
sower and He is sowing His seed all over the world. He 
is that 'Light that lighteth every man that cometh into 

v the world/ and when He does sow His seed it never re- 
turns unto Him void. 

3. If you want to know what this seed is, we have 
the explanation in the same chapter (v. 19). Speaking of 
another parable, it is said: "When any one heareth the 
Word of the kingdom, and understandeth it not, then 
cometh the wicked one, and catcheth away that which was 
sown in his heart. This is he which received seed by the 
wayside" — referring to the W r ord of God, and this is the 
seed that the Son of God sowed, and yet, in the explana- 
tion of this parable, He does not say that the seed is the 
Word of God, but that "the good seed are the children 
of the kingdom." This is very easily understood. I can 
take a grain of corn and hold it up to you and say, "This 
is a seed" ; I can plant that seed of corn in the ground and 
it grows up and brings the stalk and then the ear, and I 



FIFTH SUNDAY AFTER EPIPHANY. L99 

can hold that ear of corn up to you and say, "This is the 
seed.' 7 The fruit of the seed is the seed. When the Word 
of God is sown as the first seed into the heart of a child 
of the devil, and there brings forth the fruit of faith, and 
he grows up a child of God, that child himself is a seed 
of the kingdom. Therefore it is true that this Son of 
God w T ho sows in His own field by daylight sows children 
of the kingdom, and when a child of God is placed into 
a community it is not simply a man, but it is God's Word 
in the man. When Daniel was taken prisoner to Babylon, 
we do not know that he took any Bible with him, but the 
Word of God was in the man, and the W r ord of God in 
the man was the seed that told the W r ise Men of the 
East — not that there is a child to be born that is Son 
of God and King of the Jews — but that He is born. There- 
fore when a child of God is placed in any community, it 
is the seed that the Son of God has sown, and if you are 
a child of God this morning, you, yourself, are a seed 
from the hand of God, and the Word itself has produced 
that which you are to-day — namely, its fruit. 

III. The Second Sowing. This is the first sowing of 
seed that the Son of God sowed, but mark you, my friends, 
there is another sowing takes place before this Heavenly 
Harvest is reached. 

1. The second sowing takes place in the dark. "But 
while men slept his enemy came and sowed tares among 
the wheat, and w^ent his way." You will remember that 
when God first created the heavens and the earth He pro- 
nounced all things good. All was holy. All was light. 
Then sin came into the world. Adam and Eve sinned 
against their God. And what was the first thing they 
did after they had sinned? Did they run out to meet their 
God as they had before? No, they tried to make them- 
selves aprons and went and hid themselves, and when God 
came into that garden He did not see- — humanly speak- 
ing — Adam nor Eve, but raised His voice, "Adam, where 
art thou?" Where was he? He was just exactly where 
every unforgiven sinner wants to be to-day, and this was 
down in the dark, hiding. When your children do what is 



200 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

wrong they do not run out and say, "Father, here we 
are," but they try to hide the wrong. And the devil has 
been sowing in the dark from that day to this. When- 
ever people have done anything that is not right, they try 
to put it under the bushel; whenever people have done 
anything that is not right, they say, "Don't let this thing 
get out." It is the devil sowing his second sowing in the 
field of our God. 

2. I say it is the devil, and there is no question about 
it. "The enemy that sowed them is the devil," says Jesus. 
Oh! how much he has been sowing in the dark. The 
thief does not steal out in the daylight. Whenever a man 
does anything — commits a sin — that he wants to hide 
from his parents, or his wife, or his family, he wants to 
do it in the dark. And the devil is the one who puts the 
thought into his heart, "Get into the dark and hide this 
thing." Ask yourself the question to-day, "Have I been 
helping the devil to sow in the dark, or am I sowing in 
the light?" 

3. And when he does sow, he sows children of the 
Devil. "But the tares are the children of the wicked one." 
Just as the children of God are the seed that God sows — 
just so the children of the devil are the fruit of the devil 
— the fruit of unbelief, and he is sowing them wherever 
he can. It makes no difference, my friends, whether you 
have God's Word in your homes, or a child of light, the 
visible Word; and, on the other hand, it makes no dif- 
ference whether you have unbelief in your home, or a child 
of the devil — the two things are inseparable. Unbelief is 
not a thing that Christ has sown in your heart; unbelief is 
inseparable from the natural man, and just as soon as 
the devil can sow into your heart an unbelief, he has 
sown a seed there. When the devil tried to tempt Jesus 
Christ what did he do? The first thought was that "If 
thou be the Son of God ..." The first thing he 
wanted to sow into the heart of Jesus Christ was the ques- 
tion whether He is the Son of God. A doubt is wiiat he 
wanted to sow into His heart, and if he could have sown 
that little doubt into the heart of Jesus Christ, our Savior 
would not have been our Savior — He would have been 



FIFTH SUNDAY AFTER EPIPHANY. 201 

ruined forever. And so I say to you this morning, that 
when Satan wants to sow his seed, he puts infidelity into 
vour hearts, and you yourself become the seed, and he 
plants you here and there. Every ungodly father is a 
seed of the devil; every ungodly boy is a seed of the 
devil; every ungodly woman is a seed of the devil; every 
ungodly child that has not been recreated and born again 
is a child of the devil, and you cannot any more have these 
seeds of the devil in your homes without spoiling the har- 
vest than you can have tares in your wheat without spoiling 
your harvest. 

IV. The season of Rest. When the world — the 
field — is before us, and the first sowing is done, and 
the second sowing is done, then comes a season 
of rest. "Men slept" as soon as the sowing was 
done, and not only did men sleep, but Satan went 
his way, and the seed all grew. You know right 
after sowing time is a time when people can take a little 
rest. I know on the farm, about corn-planting time we 
had no time to visit, and along from the 15th of Septem- 
ber until the last of October was a very busy season — 
it was seeding time — and when the ground is ready and 
the seed is ready for sowing there is no time for rest, but 
after corn planting and after the seeding in the fall is 
done, then the farmers say, "Now if we want to visit, let 
us visit; the seed is in the ground." And just so it is 
with the Heavenly Harvest. When God has sown His 
wheat, the devil comes by night and sows his seed; then 
it is that the children of God go to sleep and think every- 
thing is all right. While men slept the devil sowed his 
seed, and the devil is sowing his seed in every church on 
earth while the preachers are sleeping; the devil is sow- 
ing his seed while church councils are sleeping; the devil 
is sowing his seed in the church while the members of the 
church are sleeping, and thinking, "Oh, the Word of God 
is being preached and the work is going on, and there is 
no danger; we are all on the way to the kingdom." Oh! 
stop and think. While you are sleeping the devil sows 
his seed. That is the rest season. 



202 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

2. And the devil went his way. When the next morn- 
ing came and they looked around over the field, they could 
not see anything extraordinary; there was no one there. 
The devil came by night and did his sowing and went 
his way. That is all he cares about. Sometimes we think 
because we cannot see the devil standing before us with 
horns, therefore there is no devil; and if we cannot see 
him kindling the fires and persecuting the Christians, there- 
fore there is no devil. Oh! my friends, there is no more 
dangerous time in the Christian Church than when the 
devil has gone his way; there is no more dangerous time 
in the Christian Church than when Christians are asleep; 
there is no more dangerous time in the Christian Church 
than when we simply look at the blade. Those who are 
raised on a farm know very well that when the wheat 
first comes up, it all looks like wheat. The field is sown, 
the rains fall, and one little spear after another comes 
out, and the first thing we know, we look over the field 
and it is all covered with the green wheat, as we sup- 
pose; and so it is with regard to the seed of the devil in 
the second sowing, and of God in the first sowing. 

3. "But when the blade was sprung up, and brought 
forth fruit, then appeared the tares also." Then — when? 
After the fruit was here — and from the time the seed 
was sown until the fruit began to manifest itself, they 
thought it was all wheat. Oh! what a picture we have 
there of the Church of God on earth. Here is a little 
child, not baptized, and here is another that is baptized, 
and you look and say, "It is all wheat." Here are a boy 
and girl who are Christians, and here is another who is 
not. You look at their actions. They act alike, they look 
alike, they talk alike, and we say, "They are all wheat." 
We look around over the congregation, and here are old 
members of the church who have fought the battles of 
God from their youth up; here is another man who does 
not know where he stands, but he pays his debts and 
tries to be a moral man; tries to be called a good citi- 
zen, and stands up as if to say, "Am I not just as good 
wheat as these other men?" They all look alike. It is 
the season of rest. When the blades are coming out they 



FIFTH SUNDAY AFTER EPIPHANY. 203 

all look alike. But mark you! there is a* sad discovery 
after this season of rest. 

V. The Sad Discovery. 1. "But when the blade was 
sprung up, and brought forth fruit, then appeared 
the tares also." In other w^ords, when the harvest 
was almost ripe, lo! and behold, two harvests in the same, 
field. One was tares and the other was wheat. Little 
did they know about, these tares the night they were 
sown; little did they know about these tares when the 
blades were coming out of the ground, but now when they 
are developing, the w r heat develops into wheat, bright and 
clean, and the tares show forth their black seeds, and 
every one knows the difference now. And so, my dear 
friends, things begin to develop in the Church of God. This 
child of Satan in the Church may look like a Christian — 
but wait until the harvest is almost ripe — wait until the 
day of trial comes — wait until the test comes, and you 
will see the difference. You and I as fathers and mothers 
can act just alike as long as our children are well and 
happy, but when the boy dies, and when the mother dies, 
and when eternity's doors are thrown open, watch the chil- 
dren of the devil. They howl and howl and have no com- 
fort — tares among the wheat! While these children of 
God, recognizing that God knows better than we do, say, 
"The Lord has given and the Lord has taken; blessed be 
the name of the Lord." That is wheat. Any one can 
tell the difference when the fruit is coming on, whether it 
is wheat or whether it is tares. A Sad Discovery — two 
harvests in the great world. 

2. Do not be surprised if you find this big field of 
God's world full of ungodly people — tares — and do not 
be surprised if you find among the tares, wheat. It is 
all God's world, and the discovery is not only the fact 
that there are two harvests in the same field, but there is 
a great w 7 orry on the part of the servants of God. Jesus 
Christ found no fault with these men for sleeping that 
night. When a man works all day he has a right to 
sleep at night, but, nevertheless, while they were sleep- 
ing the enemy sowed his seed, and these men did not know 
that that seed was sown until the harvest was almost 



204 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

ripe, and they walked out and looked over the field, and 
lo! there were the tares, and they were terribly worried, 
and they said to the sower, "Didst not thou sow good seed 
in thy field? From whence then hath it tares?" They were 
worried and ready at once to take their sickles and cut out 
every stalk of the tares. How troubled they were! I realize 
what that means, perhaps, more than some of you do; I 
know what it means to stand before a people to whom 
God has called me to bring the everlasting Gospel, and 
when I sometimes see in the Church of God men who live 
like children of the devil; when I see in the Church of 
God men professing to be Christians and not caring 
whether they hear God's Word or not; when I see men 
in the house of God who curse and swear like children 
of the devil; when I see in the house of God men who will 
carry on altogether as only the children of the devil can 
carry on, when I see these tares among the wheat, some- 
times I wonder if there is not some way to get rid of these 
tares — I wonder if there is not some way to throw them 
out. How worried we are at times because people will not 
serve their God as they ought to, and yet we are told by 
the Great Sower that these two harvests must be left alone 
a little while, because if you go out in the field and 
try to pull up the tares, the roots are so entwined in each 
other that you cannot possibly pull the tares out without 
taking the wheat out with them. 

3. False religions have tried time and again to burn out 
the tares with the fires of persecution, but we never 
persecute; they have tried time and again to force peo- 
ple into the kingdom of heaven at the edge of the 
sword, but we never do that ; they have tried time and again 
to force people into the house of God by the power of the 
police, but we never do that. "Oh, no," says the Great 
Sower, "that is not the way to do, you servants of God; 
I will tell you what to do." "He said unto them, 'An 
enemy hath clone this.' The servants said unto Him, 'Wilt 
thou then that we go and gather them up?' But he said, 
'Nay; lest while ye gather up the tares, ye root up also 
the wheat with them. Let both grow together until the 
harvest.' " Let both claim to be wheat until the harvest. 



FIFTH SUNDAY AFTER EPIPHANY. 205 

I was taught in the theological school that when men did 
not do right, according to Matt. 18, to go and tell them 
their faults, and if they will not listen, take one or two 
with yon; then if they neglect to hear it tell it to the 
church, and if they will not listen to the church, then let 
them be put out, as publicans and heathen ; and this is right, 
nevertheless, I believe that we ministers of the Gospel, as 
well as Christian people, become entirely too impatient 
to get the tares out of the wheat; we become a little 
too impatient sometimes and we drop the name of a 
man from the church books; thereby we have dropped 
the name of a man who had his heart and his life en- 
twined in the heart and life of a wife, and in the hearts 
and lives of some dear children, and when we put the 
man out we put his family out. I say let us be very 
slow to take hold of an ungodly man, even in the church, 
to throw him out, for what good will it , do to reap the 
harvest before it is ripe? 

VI. The Harvest at last — The Lord God has laid 
down a plan that is very wise, and that is that 
the harvest is close at hand. This is the last thought 
that I wish to impress upon you this morning. 
The harvest is close at hand. Let both grow to- 
gether until the harvest, and in the time of the harvest 
He will say to the reapers, 'Gather ye together first the 
tares, and bind them in bundles to burn them; but gather 
the wheat into my barn,' and in explaining this last 
thought the Savior said, "The Son of man shall send forth 
His angels, and they shall gather out of His kingdom all 
things that offend, and them which do iniquity; and shall 
cast them into a furnace of fire; there shall be wailing 
and gnashing of teeth. Then shall the righteous shine 
forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father. Who 
hath ears to Hear, let him hear." 

1. Yes, my friends, the harvest is close at hand, and 
notice that God is going to do the harvesting. Satan will 
come at night — in the dark — and sow the seed, but when 
the harvest day comes, it is not for man to reap that 
harvest, it is not for the devil to reap that harvest — God 
is going to reap the whole harvest; the field is His and He 



20 G THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

is going to see to it that His angels do as He says. Re- 
member that in the last great Heavenly Harvest, God is 
the reaper. 

2. God is the reaper, and when He reaps there will 
not be a single seed of tares left — not a seed. He will 
say to His angels, 'Go and gather up the tares; bind them 
in bundles and cast them into the furnace of fire and they 
shall be burned up.' Then where are the tares? Then 
where is the harvest? Oh, children of the devil, walk- 
ing outside of God's kingdom, standing in the wheat, do 
not think for a single moment that you are wheat if you 
are not; do not think for a moment that on the last great 
Judgment Day you shall be with the children of God in 
heaven. Mark what I tell you this morning. God is go- 
ing to reap the harvest, and when He reaps not a stalk of 
the tares will stand; not a seed of the tares will go into 
His barn. " He will gather up the harvest and you will 
then look like your father the devil. Remember what 
Isaiah said about the lost: "Their worm dieth not; neither 
shall their fire be quenched, for they shall be an abhorring 
to all flesh." A man looks just as he thinks. If he thinks 
devilish thoughts, he looks like his father the devil; if he 
thinks of Godly things, his face begins to look divine. Oh, 
children of the devil, although you grow up as tares among 
the wheat, the time is coming when you will look like 
the devil himself, and be an abhorring to all flesh. 

3. On the other hand, while God will not save a single 
seed of the tares, he will not lose a single grain of the 
wheat. We have often seen a threshing going on in a 
field when many a seed of the tares went through the 
sieve into the wheat, and we have often seen many a 
grain of wheat fall to the ground that was not gathered 
up, but that will not be so when that Great Harvest comes. 
The Lord God tells us that all the wheat will be gathered 
up into His barn — not a seed shall be lost, and they 
shall shine like the sun of righteousness in the presence 
of their father. Yes, children of God, let me encourage 
you this morning to remain faithful until death; let me 
encourage you to hear God's Word and make full use of the 
means of grace, and grow in that grace, for the harvest 
is close at hand. 



FIFTH SUNDAY AFTER EPIPHANY. 207 

Not oue seed sown will perish until the harvest day. 
"Whatsoever a man sowetli, that shall he reap." Sow tares 
and you will reap tares; sow sins and you will reap sins; 
sow death and you will reap death; sow hell and you 
will reap hell. On the other hand, sow the Word of God 
in your hearts and you will reap faith; sow the Word of 
God in your faith and you will reap eternal life, and shall 
shine forth like the sun in the presence of the Father; 
then the wheat shall be wheat forever, and the tares shall 
be dying forever and yet not dead. 

Take this thought home with you this morning — the 
Harvest is close at hand. For four thousand years Christ 
had been proclaimed by promise, and by actually having 
come, and died, and we are nearly two thousand years 
nearer the harvest than when Christ came and died for 
you and me. What shall the harvest be? What will the 
harvest be if God calls you into eternity this morning? 
Prepare to meet your God and be faithful unto Him, and 
all the tares in the wheat can never destroy you, for not 
a single seed shall be lost in that Heavenly Harvest. May 
God grant that we may all be found there in His presence 
forever on that great day. Amen. 

PRAYER. 

We ask Thy divine blessing, Our Heavenly Father, upon these words 
which have been sown to-day in the name of the Great Sower, the Son of 
man ; and we thank Thee, O God, that there is not a space of ground in this 
whole earth that does not belong to Thy field, and we thank Thee that Thy 
blessed Word is a good seed, and that even the children of the kingdom 
are Thy seed ; we pray Thee, Heavenly Father, that Thou wilt help us to 
become that seed which shall live forever because we have come from Thy 
Word. We pray Thee that Thou wilt bless this message this morning to 
the souls and hearts of all those who have come into this temple, and may we 
each one, as we stand here in this large audience this morning, stand here 
as a sheaf of wheat — precious — bought with the blood of the Lamb, ac- 
cepted by the Father. We pray Thee, O God, that as Thy children, we may 
succeed in whatever we undertake, because we ask Thee to be our Guide. 
Direct us in the path of life, make us useful for the winning of souls for 
Jesus, and eventually, when our work on earth is all done, gather us home. 
We ask it in the name of the great Master who taught us to pray: 

Our Father, who art in heaven ; Hallowed be Thy name ; Thy kingdom 
come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven ; Give us this day our 
daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass 
against us. Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil ; for Thine 
is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever and ever. Amen. 



SIXTH SUNDAY AFTER EPIPHANY 



THE TRANSFIGURATION. 



Matt. 17 : 1-9. 



il J f ND after six days Jesus taketh Peter, James, and John his brother,. 
P^ bringeth them up into a high mountain apart, and was transfigured 
* before them ; and His face did shine as the sun, and His raiment was 

white as the light. And behold, there appeared unto them Moses and Elias 
talking with Him. Then answered Peter and said unto Jesus, 'Lord, it is 
good for us to be here : if Thou wilt, let us make here three tabernacles : 
one for Thee, and one for Moses, and one for Elias.' While he yet spake, 
behold a bright cloud overshadowed them, and behold a voice out of the 
cloud, which said, 'This is My beloved Son, in whom- 1 am well pleased; 
hear ye Him.' And when the disciples heard it they fell on their face, and 
were sore afraid. And Jesus came and touched them, and said, 'Arise, and 
be not afraid.' And when they had lifted up their eyes, they saw no man, 
save Jesus only. And as they came down from the mountain, Jesus charged 
them, saying, 'Tell the vision to no man, until the Son of man be risen again 
from the dead.' " 

Sanctify us, O Lord, through Thy truth; 
Thy Word is Truth. Amen. 



Dear Christian Friends : 

The Church year is so divided that all the festivals come 
in the first half. Again, the first half of the Church year is 
so divided that we have three cycles: the Christmas cycle; 
the Easter cycle; and the Pentecostal cycle. To-day closes 
the Christinas cycle with another Epiphany. In all these 
Epiphany sermons we have a manifestation of the divinity 
and the humanity of the great Savior, Jesus Christ, and the 
object of these Epiphany lessons is to manifest to the world 
the only Savior, and to kindle in the hearts of all hearers a 
missionary spirit so that the whole world may hear of the 
Savior. The lesson of to-day manifests to us Jesus Christ 

208 



SIXTH SUNDAY AFTER EPIPHANY. 209 

in transfiguration. Let us then dwell a few moments this 
morning, by the aid of the Holy Spirit, upon 

THE TRANSFIGURATION. 

1. Jesus selects His own time and place. "And after 
six days Jesus taketh Peter, and James, and John his brother, 
and bringeth them up into a high mountain apart." 

1. The Time. " After six days." Six days after what? 
In the 21st verse of the 16th chapter of Matthew we find 
these words: "From that time forth began Jesus to show 
unto His disciples, how that He must go unto Jerusalem, 
and suffer many things of the elders and chief priests and 
scribes, and be killed, and be raised again the third day." 
In .other words, He proclaimed to His disciples His death 
and resurrection at Jerusalem. The time was approaching 
when the great Paschal Lamb should be offered on Calvary's 
hill. Great lessons were to be learned in the last days of 
this great school on earth and only a few scholars had at- 
tained that knowledge that they were prepared to receive 
these lessons. The Savior was approaching the hour when 
He should offer His life for the sins of the world. Peter, 
James, and John were the only scholars of all the twelve 
who were far enough advanced to receive the great lessons 
that had to be learned in a short time, and consequently He 
selects the time and the place when they shall begin to see 
for themselves that this One who dies is actually the Son 
of God. Christ knew what temptation would come to these 
disciples. He knew of that dark hour which was coming 
when all would forsake Him unless He gave them a mani- 
festation that they never could forget, that He was actually 
the Son of God. 

2. He not only selected the time to tell them and to 
show them this transfiguration, but also the place, a high 
mountain, apart from the people on earth. In other words,, 
on earth He led these three disciples just as far away from 
the human race as He possibly could, to manifest Himself 
in glory. You find all over this country churches with the 
floor level and the pulpit just as high as they could get it. 
The people did not seemingly know that the voice went up 

14 



210 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

instead of down. The Lord Jesus Christ knew that. He 
knew that if He should be transfigured down in some valley, 
the voice would go up and be heard all around among schol- 
ars not far enough advanced for that day's lesson, and so 
He takes His disciples up — up — up, to a high mountain apart 
from all the world, just as far as human witnesses in this 
life could be taken away from the people. There are some 
things in this world that are too high for some people to 
hear, and God knew this; therefore, He selected the right 
place for His transfiguration. 

Not only was the top of that mountain as far apart from 
the people below as it could be, but, furthermore, it was just 
as low as He could bring the witnesses from heaven down 
for their good and welfare. You know Mr. Barnum used to 
say that the people must be humbugged, and there are a 
great many people in these days who are humbugged by be- 
lieving that their dead can talk to them down in low places 
on earth. I am not surprised to find spiritualists in this 
world. When we look at the claims of the spiritualists it 
is a wonder there are not more people humbugged than 
there really are. The truth is that every family loves its 
dead, and, we so love our dead that if we could just talk 
to them, we would be willing to Avalk thousands of miles to 
have an hour's conversation. We do love to talk to our 
dead, and the wicked world understands that phase. of the 
human mind, and says, 'Here is a good chance to humbug 
the people'; the wicked world says, "We can make people 
pay money in order to talk with their dead — with the dead 
wife — the dead husband — the dead children — we can 
humbug them in this way; we will sing 'Bock of Ages' and 
make them believe we are religious ; we will offer a kind of 
formal prayer to make them believe there can be no humbug 
about this, and then we will make one appear to be a medium 
through whom the dead can come and speak to others ; and 
in order that we can deceive them the better and make 
things look a little more like something supernatural we 
will put out the lights, or turn them down, and make things 
look as mysterious as possible, and make the people believe 
they are talking with the dead." And the result is that many 
.even so-called wise people are, week by week, sitting down in 



SIXTH SUNDAY AFTER EPIPHANY. 211 

low chambers, with low, wicked mediums, not even good 
enough for decent society, and are made to believe they are 
talking with the dead. Jesus Christ knew very well what 
the devil would try to accomplish ; He knew very well what 
the world would try to do in the future, and so He let us 
know, in the first place, that He could bring the dead back 
if He wanted to, and, in the second place, that this world is 
no place for the dead people to remain, and consequently 
He brought Moses and Elias back, not down among the low 
trash of the world — not down to some low valley, or to 
some dark little room, but He brought them back to the 
high mountain, by the greatest light that could be found on 
earth — the light of the transfigured Light of he world ! and 
they were never seen any lower on earth than that. And so, 
dear friends, we find that Jesus knew just exactly the right 
time and the right place for this transfiguration. 

II. Jesus selected his own witnesses. He selected the 
best witnesses that could be found on earth; the best wit- 
nesses that could be found in Paradise; and the best wit- 
nesses that He could bring down from heaven. 

"And behold, there appeared unto them Moses and Elias 
talking with Him. Then answered Peter and said unto 
Jesus, 'Lord, it is good for us to be here : if Thou wilt, let 
us make here three tabernacles : one for Thee, and one for 
Moses and one for Elias. ? While he yet spake, behold a 
bright cloud overshadowed them, and behold a voice out of 
the cloud, which said, 'This is My beloved Son, in whom I 
am well pleased ; hear ye Him'." 

The other witnesses are mentioned in the first verse: 
"And after six days Jesus taketh Peter, and James, and 
John, his brother, and bringeth them up into an high 
mountain apart." 

1. From these words you will notice that we have three 
kinds of witnesses at this transfiguration. The first were 
the very best witnesses that could be found on earth. Where 
would you go on earth to find better witnesses than Peter, 
and James, and John? It is true that Peter at one time 
denied his Master, but it is also true that when his eyes 
were opened he went out and wept bitterly. There never 
was a bolder man than Peter ; there never was a man more 



212 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

faithful to his God than Peter; there never was a more im- 
petuous man than Peter; there never was a more noble 
character than Peter; there never was a more humble man 
than Peter, who, even in the hour of his death was so humble 
that he asked the people who crucified him to put his head 
down in order that he might not be crucified as his Master- 
was, with His head up. What a grand witness to be at the 
transfiguration of Christ! 

Then there is James — honest, practical James; faith- 
ful James ; the man who hated all kind of shams ; the man 
who knew that faith without works is dead; the man who 
knew that Christianity is more than simply a tongue con- 
fession, but a life — a life that must show itself as a mani- 
festation on earth, through man, as the manifestation on that 
mountain was through the God-man. 

And there was John — noble, big-hearted, faithful John ; 
loving and beloved John — so beloved that even his enemies 
allowed him to live as the only one of the twelve to die a 
natural death; that man whom according to tradition God 
selected to take care of the Virgin Mary for a period of 
fifteen years, and held her head on his arm when she 
passed into eternity. Such witnesses God had from earth 
at this transfiguration. 

2. We find there were witnesses there from Paradise. 
When those who pass from a Christian life into that which 
the world calls death, leave us, we are taught by the Word 
of the Savior on the cross, they go to Paradise. "To-day 
thou shalt be with Me in Paradise." And if you want to 
know where Paradise is, remember that Paul said when 
lifted up into the third heaven, he saw Paradise. We find 
that the Lord God brings some witnesses down from Para- 
dise, and where could He have gotten a better witness than 
Moses, or Elias? 

Moses — the man who received the law at the hands of 
God! Moses, the law-giver; Moses, who knew that it was 
wrong to kill; to commit adultery; to steal; to lie; Moses 
who held not only in his heart, but in his hands, that moral 
law that never can be changed, showing us our duty to our 
God, and our duty to our fellow men! God said, "Moses, 
come down and witness mv transfiguration before men.'- 



SIXTH SUNDAY AFTER EPIPHANY. 213 

And there was Elias — that great prophet of Carmel; 
the man who stood up for the glory of God in the days of 
old; the man who ascended to heaven in the chariot of 
tire — "Come down, Elijah, 1 want thee to witness My mani- 
festation to the children of men." There were two great and 
grand witnesses from Paradise. 

3. Another Witness — the greatest of all — is the Eter- 
nal Witness — the Father, who, for the second time, speaks 
from heaven. You will remember when Jesus was baptized 
in the river Jordan, God, the Father, cried down, "This is 
My beloved Son, in avIioui I am well pleased!" That was the 
beginning of His great ministry, and now, that we are ap- 
proaching the end of this great ministry, God, the Father, 
comes down again, in a cloud, overshadowing the disciples, 
and cries out the second time, "This is My beloved Son, in 
whom I am well pleased," and added these words : "Hear 
ye Him." It is not enough simply to know there is a Savior 
— we are to hear that Savior; we are to hear the message 
of God, and that proclamation from that Mount of Trans- 
figuration goes out over the world to-day : "Hear ye Him" ! 

III. At this transfiguration Jesus throws off His in- 
cognito. I use this word, especially, because it is the tech- 
nical term, expressing exactly what we mean. You remem- 
ber often reading of certain great kings and rulers who 
travel incognito — in plain English, — unknown. There are 
times when our rulers travel with great pomp and show; 
but there are other times when they throw off the crown, 
throw off their royal garments, and put on the common 
garments, that they may travel unknown to the people, in 
order that they may be unburdened with society, and in order 
that they may mix with their own subjects and come in 
closer contact with their people. The Lord Jesus Christ 
had been traveling for nearly one third of a century on 
earth incognito. In other words, He had thrown off His 
royal garment on high, and had come down on earth a little 
child. People stood within a few feet of the great King of 
heaven, and did not know Him ; all Jerusalem saw Him and 
did not recognize Him ; and as time passed on, He went up 
into a high mountain apart, and for a moment He threw off 
the incognito and showed Himself as the great King of 



214 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

Heaven, natural to these witnesses from Paradise — natural 
to His Father — but overwhelming to the three disciples 
from earth. 

1. I say He appeared quite natural to these witnesses 
from Paradise. Luke tells us just what they were talking 
about. Matthew says : "Behold, there appeared unto them 
Moses and Elias talking with Him," but he does not say 
what the conversation was. Luke tells us that they were 
talking about the death that Jesus was to suffer at Jerusa- 
lem. In other words, the death of Christ was such a great 
event, that even Moses and Elias were so much interested 
in it that they came down on the Mount of Transfiguration 
to talk with the Master before that great tragedy occurred. 
They were not surprised. There was nothing unnatural 
about Him to these two men. In other words, they did not 
look upon this transfiguration as anything unusual. It was 
an old thing to Moses. When Moses first met God, he saw 
Him in the burning bush. When he met Him again, he saw 
Him in the fiery cloud by night and the cloud by day. Again, 
when he received the law on Mount Sinai, midst thunder- 
ings and lightning, he was in the presence of the same God. 
When he received that wonderful revelation of creation, 
he saw God in all His glory, saying : "Let there be light." 
When Moses was buried, and no one but God knows where, 
and his soul went home, he saw Jesus in His glory. So I 
say this was nothing unnatural for Moses on that Mount 
of Transfiguration; nor anything unnatural for Elijah. 
On that day over at Mt. Carmel when he tested who the 
true and living God was — when he said, "How long halt 
ye between two opinions? If the Lord be God, follow 
Him; but if Baal, then follow him" — on that day when 
the final test came, and the fire came from heaven and 
burned up his sacrifice — he saw this same Savior in His 
glory. At another time when he walked down across the 
Jordan, and Elisha went with him and begged that he 
might go with him, he told him he could not, but left 
his blessing with him, and the fiery chariot came upon the 
ethereal highway, and caught Elijah, and went up, up- 
ward with him, in all that glory Elijah saw the same Lord. 



SIXTH SUNDAY AFTER EPIPHANY. 215 

So 1 say there was nothing new on this day for these two 
witnesses. 

2. And well might I say that surely it was a natural 
scene for the Father* God, the Father, who begat His Son 
in all eternity, always saw Him in His glory, until He be- 
came man, when the Word was made liesh and dwelt among 
us, he put on His garment and came incognito before the 
world; but remember that long before the foundation of 
the world was laid, Christ was with His Father in glory ; do 
not forget that from the day of the promise of a Savior 
until He became the child at Bethlehem, He was the Son 
of glory ; and do not forget that in this hour the Son simply 
came back naturally to His Father in that great transfigura- 
tion. 

3. But, on the other hand, there were three men there 
who never saw Jesus in His glory before. There were three 
men there who were completely overwhelmed — dumbfounded. 
One of the evangelists tells us that Peter did not know 
what to say ; another one tells us that he did not know what 
he was saying; Matthew tells us what he did say. "Then 
answered Peter and said. 'Lord, it is good for us to be here ; 
if Thou wilt, let us make here three tabernacles: one for 
Thee, and one for Moses, and one for Elias." But, mark 
you, that does not tell us that he did not know what he was 
talking about. He did not know what to say. Peter would 
talk, you never could keep him from talking ; he would talk 
whether he knew what to say or not ; but he felt that some- 
thing ought to be said, and so he said, "Lord . . if thou wilt, 
let us make here three tabernacles; one for Thee, and one 
for Moses and one for Elias," but the Lord paid no attention 
to his talk. The Lord does not always listen. If we pray 
without praying in Jesus' name, He pays no attention to 
our talk. And so on that day we find these disciples com- 
pletely overwhelmed. Another disciple tells us that a heavy 
sleep came over them. They lie prostrate before that great 
light. They waken ; they hear a voice : "This is My beloved 
Son, in whom I am well pleased. Hear ye Him." Wake up, 
disciples! Oh, they never forgot that sight! Those three 
men, those three great witnesses never forgot that great sight, 



216 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

when the Lord appeared before thein in glory, when His 
face did shine as the sun and His raiment was white as the 
light. Long after that, when Peter began to write his sec- 
ond epistle, this whole thought came before him, and he 
wrote these words : "For Ave have not followed cunnin«lv 
devised fables, when we made known unto you the power and 
coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were eye-Avitnesses of 
His majesty. For He received from God the Father honor 
and glory, when there came such a voice to Him from the 
excellent glory, 'This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well 
pleased. ' And this voice which came from heaven we heard, 
when we were with Him in the holy mount." 

And just as Peter never could forget this transfiguration, 
so John. The first chapter of his first epistle he begins with 
these words: "That which was from the beginning, which 
we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we 
have looked upon, and our hands have handled, of the Word 
of Life; (For the life was manifested, and- we have seen it, 
and bear witness, and shew unto you that eternal life, which 
was with the Father and was manifested unto us) ; that 
which we have seen and heard, declare we unto you, that ye 
also may have fellowship with us ; and truly our fellowship 
is with the Father, and with His Son, Jesus Christ. And 
these things write we unto you, that your joy may be full." 
Dear friends, if you want fulness of joy, you must have Jesus 
Christ in your hearts, as the Son of God, as your personal 
Savior. 

IV. Again, I would have you notice that Jesus in this 
great transfiguration, finally was alone ivith His disciples. 
"And when they had lifted up their eyes, they saw no man, 
save Jesus only." Jesus only! 

1. My dear friends, what if all who had been there had 
remained there? I suppose some of you have felt in your 
own hearts, what a glorious thing it would have been, if 
Moses would have stayed here, and if Elijah would have 
stayed here, and then the three disciples and their Master, 
and these two men from Paradise could have gone down to 
the valley again, clown among the people, and there Moses 
could have thundered away with the law, and there Elijah 
the great prophet, could have struck them down with his 



SIXTH SUNDAY AFTER EPIPHANY. 2 1 7 

forceful voice, and then Jesus could have lifted them up, 
and the whole world, you imagine, would have been trans- 
formed and become Christian. Oh, no, my friends, far bel- 
ter to have Jesus only. There are nights so dark that we 
are very glad to see the moon come up; and there are 
nights so dark that we are very glad to see the accom- 
panying stars; but after a few long hours of night we are 
glad to see one star after the other vanish; we are glad to 
see the moon go down; we are glad to see the rising sun, 
and all the stars and the moon have now vanished; and 
just so, my friends, that was a moonlight night when the 
disciples went up into that mount; it was a moonlight 
night when those two stars from Paradise came and shone, 
but, oh! what a glorious morning it was, when these dis- 
ciples opened their eyes and saw nothing but the Son of 
Righteousness. Jesus only! The truth of it is you never 
are in better company than when you are with Jesus only. 
2. Something else might have happened. It might not 
only have happened that all would have remained, but it 
might have been that all would have gone away. What if 
those disciples had opened their eyes and looked and beheld 
nothing? What if Elijah had gone away, and Moses had 
gone away, and Christ had gone away, and nothing was left 
but the three disciples? That might have happened, — but 
it did not. There are a great many people who come to the 
house of God, and in the midst of the service they are so 
delighted — they love to hear God's Word, and they almost 
feel themselves in the presence of the delectable mount; 
they almost feel as though they were in the presence of those 
from Paradise, and in the presence of the great Savior ; but 
no sooner have they gone away, than the world again takes 
the place of the Gospel which they heard, and before twenty- 
four hours there is no Christ with them any more — no law 
with them any more — no Gospel with them any more — 
they are alone in the world. Oh! pity that man who lives 
having Christ and the disciples with him only now and then. 
It would have been an awful calamity on that great day if 
those disciples had waked up and found nothing there but 
themselves. Imagine them going down into the valley, and 
the question coming, " Where is your Savior?" and they 
would say, "We saw Him in all His glory ; we saw Moses and 



218 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

we saw Elijah." "Where are they?" "We do not know." 
Then all the disciples, and all Jerusalem, and all the priests 
and the Pharisees would have laughed and ridiculed the three 
men. No : they came back with Jesus only ! — convinced 
that there is a world beyond — convinced that there is a life 
above — convinced that Jesus is the Son of God, let come 
what will. That was one of the great lessons that Jesus in- 
tended to teach them in that high school on the Mount of 
Transfiguration. 

3. Another thing might have happened. It might have 
happened that when they opened their eyes they saw only 
Elijah and Moses — and Christ had gone away. For many 
years the world was living with Moses, the law-giver, and 
Elijah the great prophet, but in the midst of all their law 
and their prophecy, the cry was "Watchman, what of the 
night?" They were looking for their Savior. Noav that He 
had come — now that He had begun His ministry — now 
almost at Calvary's hill to redeem the world/what a calamity 
it would have been if Jesus had gone away and again left 
them with only the law-giver and the prophet. The very best 
of all is the way it was. Jesus only in their midst. And 
that is the lesson that this great transfiguration is to teach 
us this morning — that as poor, lost, condemned sinners, let 
us come to Jesus only. 

In conclusion, Jesus said to the disciples: "Tell the 
vision to no man until after My death and resurrection." 
Thanks be to God, that awful scene of His death is now 
passed! Thanks be to God, He is risen from the dead, and 
the resurrection is now a thing of the past, and the founda- 
tion of the resurrection of the future! Thanks be to God, 
since that day we have had greater manifestations of Jesus. 
On that great day of Pentecost when He sent His Holy Spirit, 
that was another manifestation of Jesus Christ, and from 
that day to this He has come to each individual soul, and to 
every one who is a Christian, He has come as his only Savior, 
and has given him a light — not outwardly, but within — 
that makes him know in his own heart that "God dwells in 
me, and I dwell in Him." 

And in conclusion, let me furthermore state that the 
time is not far off when we shall see another Epiphany — 



SIXTH SUNDAY AFTER EPIPHANY. 2 H) 

another manifestation of the Son of God, with greater glory 
than on that high mountain in the presence of the witnesses 
from paradise and this earth. On that last great day when 
He comes with all His holy angels, in all His glory, then, 
my friends, we shall know what James meant Avhen he called 
I Li m the God of Glory. Then He will come in that great 
manifestation when all the children of men shall stand be- 
fore Him, and He shall decide once and forever who shall 
dwell with Him and who sahll not. "He that believeth and 
is baptized shall be saved, but he that believeth not shall be 
damned." These are the words of the Judge — the Son of 
Glory — of the Eternal God, who is the Way, the Truth, and 
the Life, and no man cometh to the Father but by Him. 
May the Holy Spirit this morning transplant that transfig- 
uration of old into your own minds and hearts and souls, 
that you may wake and find yourselves in the presence of 
Jesus only. Amen. 

PRAYER. 

O God of Glory ! We come before Thee in this morning hour, thankful 
for Thy glorious Truth and thankful for Thy convincing power that Thou 
art the Son of God. O Thou, who hast through Peter, and James, and John, 
give to us this light, we thank Thee for Thy blessed apostles, and for Thy 
Church purchased with Thy blood, which to-day holds forth to us that glo- 
rious Epiphany of Thy great coming. We ask Thee that Thou wilt now 
prepare us for the Easter cycle into which we enter, where we shall consider 
more fully Thy sufferings and Thy death, and Thy glorious resurrection. 
We ask Thee to be with all the hearers in this church this morning, and 
with all Thy people in the world ; and may this day more souls be strengthened 
and more souls be won for Thy kingdom than any day in the history of the 
world; and may the seed that has been sown this morning from Thy Truth 
everywhere, bring forth a great harvest, to Thy glory. Hear this, our prayer, 
in the name of the Great Master who taught us to pray : 

Our Father, who art in heaven ; Hallowed be Thy name ; Thy kingdom 
come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven ; Give us this day our 
daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass 
against us ; and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil ; for Thine 
is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever and ever. Amen. 



SEPTUAQESIMA. 



QOD'S QIFT OF GRACE. 



f 



Matt. 20 : 1-16. 



** ^f^OR the kingdom of heaven is like unto a man that is a householder, 
which went out early in the morning to hire laborers into his vine- 
yard. And when he had agreed with the laborers for a penny a day, 
he sent them into his vineyard. And he went out about the third hour, and 
saw others standing idle in the market place, and said unto them: 'Go ye 
also into the vineyard, and whatsoever is right I will give you.' And they 
went their way. Again he went out about the sixth and ninth hour, and did 
likewise. And about the eleventh hour he went out, and found others stand- 
ing idle, and saith unto them, 'Why stand ye here all the day idle?' They 
say unto him, 'Because no man hath hired us.' He said unto them, 'Go ye 
also into the vineyard ; and whatsoever is right, that shall ye receive.' So 
when even was come, the lord of the vineyard saith unto his steward, 'Call 
the laborers, and give them their hire, beginning from the last unto the first.' 
And when they came that were hired about the eleventh hour, they received 
every man a penny. But when the first came they supposed that they should 
have received more ; and they likewise received every man a penny. And 
when they received it, they murmured against the good man of the house, 
saying : 'These last have wrought but one hour, vand thou hast made them 
equal unto us, which have borne the burden and heat of the day.' But he 
answered one of them and said, 'Friend, I do thee no wrong; didst not thou 
.agree with me for a penny? Take that thine is and go thy way; I will give 
unto this last even as unto thee. Is it not lawful for me to do what I will 
with mine own? Is thine eye evil because I am good?' So the last shall be 
first, and the first last : for many be called, but few chosen." 

Sanctify us, O Lord, through Thy truth; 
Thy Word is Truth. Amen. 



Beloved in Christ: 

This day we enter upon the Easter cycle of the 
Church year. The Church of old was wise in -calling 
the next three Sundays by the Latin names: Septua- 
gesima, Sexagesinia and Quinquagesima. These terms, 
as some of you may understand, tell us clearly that it is 

220 



SEPTU AGESI M A . 22 1 

about seventy days; and next Sunday, it is about sixty 
days; and the following Sunday, just about fifty days until 
Easter. This may not mean very much to some people, 
but to others it does. Some people are too late for Sunday- 
school because they do not think about getting ready until 
just time for Sunday-school; some people are too late for 
church because they do not think about church until it is 
just time to be in church ; and some people will never reach 
heaven because they do not think about it in time. A 
Christian should think about Easter long before Easter 
comes, and, consequently, we begin this morning in the 
Church year, to think of the great Christ who is to die 
and rise again, and of the labor that we should do in His 
great vineyard. 

What is salvation worth? This young lawyer of whom 
we read, wdio came to the Savior asking the question: 
"What good thing shall I do that I may have eternal life?" 
certainly did not understand the value of salvation. He 
asked the same question that thousands of people are ask- 
ing to-day, expecting to reach heaven by their own good- 
ness, and the question of the moralist is the question of 
that young man, who thinks he does not need to be a 
church member; it is the question of every man who ex- 
pects to get to heaven by his own acts instead of by the 
mercy of the Lord Jesus Christ, and all the time he is 
asking the question, "What good thing can I do that I may 
inherit eternal life?" Why, the real truth of it is, you 
can do nothing, and in order to open this young lawyer's 
eyes, the Savior tries him on his own basis. He says, "You 
are thinking of earning your own salvation — keep the com- 
mandments; keep the first, the second, the third, the fourth 
— all of them." "Why," says the young lawyer, "these 
things have I kept from my youth up. What shall I do?" 
That is just where the young lawyer made the mistake. 
He thought he had been keeping those commandments 
when he had not. The sum and substance of the second 
table of the law is, "Love your neighbor as yourself," and 
yet this young lawyer w T as wealthy, and was not willing to 
love his neighbor as himself, and give his wealth to the poor ; 



222 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

but Jesus said, in order to try him : "If thou wilt be perfect, 
go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou 
shalt have treasure in heaven: and come, and follow Me." 
But the young man went away sorrowful, for he had great 
possessions. He did not know what salvation is worth, or 
he never would have talked about what he could do to in- 
herit life enternal. 

The disciples themselves did not know what salvation 
is worth. When the Savior turned around and told them 
that it is going to be a very hard thing for a rich man to 
enter the kingdom of heaven, they came to Him with the 
question, "Who then can be saved?" I used to think that 
was a wonderfully hard saying of Jesus, that it is hard for 
a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven, but the older 
I grow, and the more I see how people are clinging to their 
wealth instead of to God, the more I am convinced that it 
is a hard thing for a rich man to enter the kingdom of 
heaven. If these disciples had understood what salvation 
is worth, they would never have put the question, "Who 
then can be saved?" 

Peter, himself one of the apostles, did not understand 
w T hat it is worth. After the disciples had asked, "Who 
then can be saved?" — after the lawyer had gone away sor- 
rowful, then proud Peter arises — humble in himself in 
many ways, but nevertheless thinking of what he had done 
— and said, "What shall come to us for all that we have 
left? We have forsaken all and followed Thee. What 
shall we get for all this?" You see what he was after was 
a high position in heaven above for what he had done, and 
it was necessary for the Savior to teach honest but mis- 
taken Peter that he himself did not know yet what sal- 
vation is worth. 

And, dear friends, I am glad to say to-day, that no man 
on earth knows what salvation is worth. God only knows 
it, but if every man did know, only partially, what sal- 
vation is worth, he would not live one minute without it. 
The truth of it is that salvation is the gift of grace, and 
therefore the Lord gave this beautiful parable showing 



SEPTUAGESIMA. 223 



GOD S GIFT OF GRACE. 

I. This Gift of Grace is too great not to reach every 
man 011 earth. Every mail on earth should be called. The 
last words of our text are: "For many be called, but few 
chosen." How many called? All shall be called. A par- 
able, as you well know, is something that is plain, and well 
understood, in order to explain something that is higher 
and not so easily understood. The Savior therefore tells 
us that the kingdom of heaven is like unto a man that is a 
householder, which went out early in the morning to hire 
laborers into his vineyard. We find in this parable that 
he went out in the early morning hour; the third hour, or 
at nine o'clock; he went out again at the sixth hour, or 
noon; again the ninth hour, or three o'clock in the after- 
noon, and the eleventh hour, or five o'clock in the after- 
noon. In other w r ords, He w^ants everybody to be called 
into the vineyard of our God. This parable shows us what 
the kingdom of heaven is like. In other words, the gift 
of God's grace is so valuable that no one shall be over- 
looked on earth, in the periods of time, or in the periods of 
life. 

1. In the periods of time. There never was a time that 
God did not send His call out to the world to save every 
man. When Adam and Eve committed their first sin, and 
thereby were guilty of eternal death, before that day's 
sun w T ent down, God went to them and promised them a 
Savior, in order that they might receive the call, and that 
was the first hour in the history of the world. 

When time passed on, and the world got very wicked, 
He went out in the third hour and called again, in the days 
of Noah. For one hundred and twenty years He called, 
and called, and called for sinners to repent, but they would 
not repent, they would not cling to the true and living 
God, and so the flood came. The people laughed at the 
idea of a flood on the hills and on the dry ground, but w r hen 
the waters rained for one night, for ten nights, for fifteen 
days, twenty days and nights, thirty days and nights, forty 
days and nights, and the people began to climb to the high- 
est mountains and to the highest hills, and the waters rose 



224 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

fifteen cubits above the highest point on earth, when the 
last man went down, they learned the great truth that 
when God calls, He means it. And the sea shells that 
to-day are found on the top of the highest mountains in the 
world, make scientists tell the same story that God's Word 
told — there was a universal flood. And when those eight 
souls stepped out of the ark and bowed around the altar of 
God, the whole world knew God, and it is not God's fault 
to-day if a single man is not called into the vineyard of the 
Master. That was the third hour. 

Time passed on, and the Savior came, and the clock of 
time struck twelve. It is universally conceded to-day that 
the days of Christ, and the place of His birth, are the center 
of all history. Twelve o'clock in the history of the world, 
when the Star of the East came to Bethlehem's crib. Then 
it was that God sent out His twelve apostles and said to all 
the world, "Come into God's vineyard." 

Time passed on; many did not come. The dark ages 
came and God still had the world in view. A miner's son 
was converted to the true and living God, led to the Bible 
tied to a chain, in the library at Erfurt, opened up that 
Book and found the Word of Life, nailed the ninety-five 
theses on the door of Wittenberg Church, and from that time 
to this, we have heard the call of the ninth hour : "Come 
into the vineyard of God." 

There never has been such a missionary movement as 
there was in the last century, and we are approaching the 
last hour, and God knows, but I do not, it may be that we 
are in the eleventh hour now in the history of the world. 
When we study history carefully, and the Book of Keve- 
lations carefully, we do know this, that whether the end of 
the world is thousands of years in the future, or nearer, 
we are approaching the eleventh hour. We are approach- 
ing the time when God shall take all things in hand. 

2. But I believe, my dear friends, that this parable re- 
fers more to the periods of life, than it does to the periods 
of the history of the world. This same householder went 
out in the first hour, the third hour, the sixth hour, the 
ninth hour and the eleventh hour, and called laborers into 
his vineyard. You have all those hours in your own life. 



SEPTUAGESIMA. 

The moment a little child is born into the world, God 
wants it. If He had not wanted the child He would not 
have said: "Suffer the little children to come unto Me, and 
forbid them not; for of such is the kingdom of heaven." If 
God had not wanted the little infants in the Church, He 
would not have had them circumcised at the age of eight 
days in the Old Testament Church; if He had not wanted 
the little children in the Church, He would not have taken 
one of them in His hands and said: "He that offendeth one 
of these little ones, which believe in Me, it were better for 
him that a mill stone were hanged about his neck, and he 
were drowned in the depth of the sea." If God had not 
wanted the little children in the Church, He Would not have 
said: "Train up a child in the way he should go, and when 
he is old he will not depart from it." It has been tried in 
many an assembly, and the test has been given time and 
again, that those who had been Christians from their child- 
hood, should please stand up; those who became Christians 
in middle life; and those who became Christians in old age, 
and every time you will find that the great masses arise 
when the invitation comes to those who were children of 
God from infancy. They are the people who have been in 
God's vineyard the most. 

Some people neglect their children. They are willing 
to spend money for clothing; they are willing to spend 
money for music and for education; they are willing to do 
anything to spend money for their enjoyment and for every- 
thing that pertains alone to this life, but they are not will- 
ing to bring them to the God who gave them, and to bring 
them into the vineyard and keep them there. What is to 
be done with those children? If their fathers will not do 
their duty, and if their mothers will not do their duty, God 
will send some man to them to give them the call in the 
third hour to come into the vineyard of God. To-day I send 
the call to every young boy and to every young girl in this 
house, in the third hour of your life, to come to the Lord 
God and in His vineyard — do not stand out and be idle. 

Some, however, will not even come in the third hour, 
and some are never called in the third hour, but God still 
loves their souls, and in the sixth hour, or the middle of 



226 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

life, He comes and calls, and calls. It may be that I have 
some sitting before me this morning who are twenty-five 
or thirty years of age, not yet baptized; who have not yet 
given their hearts to God; who are not yet members of the 
great body of the Lord Jesus Christ. Oh! it is now noon. 
It is noon, and at noon the sun begins to go down. I call 
upon you this morning: Why stand you idle, outside of the 
vineyard of your God? 

And there are some who even have gray hairs on their 
heads; some who are living in the afternoon of life; some 
who are going down with the sun setting in the western 
horizon, and I send the call to you at three o'clock, or in 
the ninth hour, — Tell me, how long are you going to stand 
outside of God's vineyard? 

It may be that I have some one sitting before me who 
is hearing his last sermon; it may be that I have some one 
sitting before me who has reached the last week of his life, 
or the last year of his life. It is now five o'clock in the 
afternoon — it is now the eleventh hour and God calls, and 
says, "Come into My vineyard, and I will give you what is 
right." "'Many were called, but few chosen." 

II. God's gift of grace is not only too great that any 
should not be called, but it is too perfect ever to be changed. 

1. You will notice that when this man went out in the 
early morning, he met a laborer, and he said, "Go into my 
vineyard and I will give you a penny." He went out in 
the third hour and said to the man, "Go into my vineyard 
and I will give you what is right"; he went out at the noon 
hour, and said to the laborer, "I will give you what 
is right"; he sent the men in at the ninth hour, and 
the eleventh hour and said, "Go and labor, and when 
night comes, I will give you what is right." Then 
when the evening came, he called the steward and said, 
"Settle with the laborers, beginning with the last; settle 
with every one of them, giving each one a penny" — each 
one a penny. It made no difference whether they went into 
the vineyard the first hour, or the last, there was no change 
made in the amount they received. No more than a penny, 
and no less than a penny. What is this penny? Some 
have said this penny represents the means of grace, the 



SEPTUAGESIMA. 227 

Word of God and the holy sacraments; but, dear friends, 
this is impossible. The call is the Word of God; the call 
is the means of grace. We do not receive the means of 
grace at the end of life and at the judgment; we receive the 
means of grace now, while the call is coming, so the penny 
could not mean the means of grace. What is it, my friends, 
that never changes? What is it that was just the same in 
the days of Adam as it will be when the last child is born 
into the world? I will tell you what it is. It is this gift 
of grace — Salvation! Always the same, by faith in Jesus 
Christ. How were men saved in the days of Noah? How 
were men saved in the days of Abraham — in the days of 
David — in the days of Daniel — how were men saved in 
the four hundred years between the Old Testament and 
the New? There never was a day in the history of the 
world that a man could be saved any other way than 
through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, and when God gives 
a man anything, it is salvation. Salvation by faith in the 
Old Testament days; salvation by faith in the days of 
Christ; salvation by faith in the days of the Keformation; 
salvation by faith in Christ this morning; salvation by faith 
in Christ to the end of the world! God never changes His 
plan of salvation. The Old Testament Christians were saved 
by faith in the coming Christ ; the thief on the cross was saved 
by faith in the present Christ; the apostles and all the fol- 
lowers in the Christian era were saved by faith in the cru- 
cified Christ. And so, my friends, the penny never changes. 
The gift of God's grace is too precious ever to change — too 
perfect. 

III. The gift of God's grace cannot be earned. That is 
the mistake the lawyer made — he wanted to earn his sal- 
vation. You cannot do it. It was the mistake of these men 
who labored all day. When the settlement was made and 
they saw that the last man received a penny, they wanted 
more than a penny. They murmured against the goodman ; 
they wanted something more, because, they said, "We have 
borne the burden and heat of the day.' 7 The mistake they 
made was that they did not know the value of salvation; 
they did not know that the grace of God cannot be earned 
at all. Those men who had worked from early morning 



228 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

until late at night — or, in other words, from their early 
childhood until they died — had not earned one thing to- 
ward salvation. Salvation is not a thing that you and I 
can earn. Jesus Christ said that your soul was worth more 
than all the world, and when you remember that nothing 
could pay for that soul of yours but God Himself, Incar- 
nate, dying on Calvary, then you will begin to see the fool- 
ishness of trying to get to heaven or earning your salva- 
tion by your own works or power. Those laborers did not 
stop to think that their very power of labor was a gift from 
heaven; they did not stop to think that hundreds and thou- 
sands of others, who would gladly have borne the heat 
of the day, could not bear it, because God had not given 
them the strength; and when 3011 and I have toiled in God's 
vineyard all our lives, and are still singing, "Grace, 'tis a 
charming sound," we are saved alone by grace. You cannot 
earn salvation. 

Inasmuch as these men who had labored all day could 
not earn salvation, those who labored only one hour could 
earn no less. If those who labored all day earned nothing, 
how could the man earn any less who worked an hour. 
Therefore, if you are saved when you are eighty years of 
age, you are saved by the same grace that I was saved by 
in my first year. No more than a penny, and no less. It 
cannot be earned; it is a gift. That is the reason this good 
man of the house said, "Is it not lawful for me to do what 
I will with mine own? Is thine eye evil because I am 
good? 77 Because God has been merciful enough to save 
my soul and yours, are we going to murmur and grumble? 
Some one may say this penny cannot mean salvation, just 
because they murmured and grumbled. My dear friends, 
it is just what Christians are doing to-day; it is what Peter 
did; Peter murmured; it is what thousands of people are 
doing to-day — murmuring all the time because God is not 
giving them something for the wonderful services they 
are doing; and when we have done all, we have done noth- 
ing but simply show our thankfulness. 

IV. God's Gift of Grace is too merciful to leave us un- 
thankful. These men who labored all day were unthankful. 
They received their penny, and God gave them the health 



SEPTUAGESIMA. 22!) 

and strength to do their labor, and yet they murmured. 
God had mercy enough for them to tell them to go on 
and keep what was their own, but they did not even de- 
serve the penny. Oh! when we know what salvation is 
worth, and that God has given it to us out of pure mercy, 
we ought to work, and work, and work, as if we intended 
to earn heaven. My friends, there is no danger of any 
man doing too much in God's kingdom. Look at the Apos- 
tle Paul, who fought the battles of life as no man has 
fought them since, who toiled day and night for the sal- 
vation of the world, in every possible way, and yet, when 
it was all done, he took his pen and wrote down once and 
forever the words that shall stand until the heavens fall: 
"Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith with- 
out the deeds of the law." — And to-day, dear friends, 
whoever you are, get into God's vineyard just as early as 
you can, and work, and work, and work, until you die, as 
if your very faith depended on that work; nevertheless, be 
thankful, and be so thankful that you will come to God, 
not with your works, but as a poor, lost, condemned sinner, 
saying, from the bottom of your heart: "In my hands no 
price I bring; simply to Thy cross I cling." When you have 
done all you can, count it nothing, but simply thank God 
for salvation. I tell you, when people will not work in the 
church; when they will not work in the vineyard of our 
God, it is because they are unthankful, and do not appre- 
ciate what God has done for them. When I stop to think 
that God has laid down His life for this poor sinner, how 
can I work enough to show my thankfulness to my God. 
Then why, lazy drones, stand around all your lives and do 
nothing? Why not get out into God's vineyard and do 
something — do it with all your might, and then say finally, 
at the settlement: "O God, all I ask of Thee is Thy mercy — 
Thy mercy — Thy mercy!" 

V. My last thought on this subject is that God s Gift 
of Grace is too precious to be lost. Too precious to be lost, 
either by the first or by the last. "So the last shall be first 
and the first last." The gift of God's grace is salvation. 
Salvation means that no difference how you succeed in this 
life, your life is a success. The Psalmist sang of the godly 



230 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

man thai, "Whatsoever he doeth shall prosper. Some- 
times it looks as though some godly people were not pros- 
pering; when those who are faithful to their God have 
worked hard for years, and years, and lose all they have 
in a day; or when those who have been especially faithful 
to their God are lying upon their beds of sickness and pain 
for years and years, sometimes it looks as if they were not 
prospering; but remember, my friends, before we had this 
beautiful temple in which we worship this morning, this 
furniture stood in the planks, and in the boards, in the 
joists and in the trees, and the axe had to cut and fell the 
trees, and the saw had to rip the logs and the plane had 
to smooth up all this timber, until we have a splendid 
building here. Do not forget that when a man lives in this 
world, whether the knife is on him or not, whether he is 
going through trials or not, if he comes out at death, saved 
by grace, he has prospered every step of his life; and, on 
the other hand, if he comes out at the end of life, lost — 
lost forever — his whole life has been but the beginning of 
an eternal failure. Therefore I come to you with this mes- 
sage this morning, that the gift of God's grace is too val- 
uable for the first to lose; too valuable for the last to 
lose. 

The promise of a Savior was given to the first man, 
and the last man that is born shall see Him come. Some 
one will have to be born last, just as one was created 
first. The first man created, Adam, saw his God, talked 
with his God, had the Savior promised to him, lived nine 
hundred and thirty years and taught his children to offer 
sacrifice, teaching us that he was a religious man and a 
believer in the Savior. When the last child shall be born, 
I do not know. It may be when the gates of heaven are 
thrown open and the Son of God and all His angels start 
to come here to earth; but when the last child shall be 
born and dedicated to God, and the Savior comes, it will 
receive its penny in the eleventh hour, and it shall receive 
it first, and all the rest that have been born, from Adam 
down to the last child, shall receive their wages, and Adam 
will come in last, — "And so the first shall be last, and 
the last shall be first." Amen. 



SEPTUAGESIMA. 231 



PRAYER. 

We pray Thee, our Heavenly Father, that Thou wilt this morning, reach 
down with Thy hand of mercy and bless this message of truth in the heart 
of every hearer. We pray Thee that Thou, Thyself, wilt take hold of every 
soul and lead them all into that Church which Thou hast purchased with 
Thine own blood; we pray Thee that Thou, Thyself, wilt go out this morn- 
ing and invite all the people in all the world, in each hour of life, to come 
into Thy vineyard, and work, for the evening is coming, and the night shall 
soon be here, when all labor shall cease. We pray Thee, O God, that Thou 
wilt give us a desire, a burning desire, to serve Thee with all our power, and 
with all Thy power given to us, the rest of our lives, and may all that we do 
be but an act of thanksgiving for Thy great grace and Thy great mercy. 
Hear our prayer for Jesus' sake. Amen. 



SEXAQESIMA. 



THE ROYAL ROAD TO RUIN. 



Luke; 8 : 4-15. 



""TTf'ND when much people were gathered together, and were come to Him 
f^t out of every city, He spake by a parable : A sower went out to sow 
' his seed, and as he sowed, some fell by the wayside ; and it was 

trodden down, and the fowls of the air devoured it. And some fell upon a 
rock ; And as soon as it was sprung up, it withered away, because it lacked 
moisture. And some fell among thorns ; and the thorns sprang up with it, 
and choked it. And other fell on good ground, and sprang up and bare 
fruit an hundredfold. And when He had said these things, He cried, 'He 
that hath ears to hear, let him hear.' And His disciples asked Him, saying, 
'What might this parable be?' And He said : 'Unto you it is given to know 
the mysteries of the kingdom of God : but to others in parables ; that seeing 
they might not see, and hearing they might not understand. Now the par- 
able is this : The seed is the Word of God. Those by the wayside are those 
that hear ; then cometh the devil and taketh away the Word out of their 
hearts, lest they should believe and be saved. They on the rock are they, 
which, when they hear, receive the Word with joy; and these have no root, 
which for a while believe, and in time of temptation fall away. And that 
which fell among thorns are they, which, when they have heard, go. forth, 
and are choked with cares and riches and pleasures of this life, and bring 
no fruit to perfection. But that on the good ground are they, which in an 
honest and good heart, having heard the Word, keep it, and bring forth 
fruit with patience." 

Sanctify us, O Lord, through Thy Truth; 
Thy Word is Truth. Amen. 



Dear Hearers in Christy and Especially Those Who To-day 
United with the Church by Confirmation and Baptism : — 

We have before us a beautiful parable. The Lord 
taught by parables for a two-fold purpose. Oue was that 
He might make plaiu heavenly truths by comparing them 

232 



SEXAGESIMA. ^>> 

with earthly truths, which people would understand; 
another reason for teaching in parables was that some 
people might hear and yet not hear, for if they would 
hear this Word of God and reject it, they would be guilty 
of a double damnation. In other words, the Savior said: 
"Unto you it is given to the know the mysteries of the king- 
dom of God: but to others in parables; that seeing they 
might not see, and hearing they might not understand/' 
Another evangelist tells us He spoke by parables lest some 
might be converted and be healed, and at first sight it looks 
as though He should have taught everybody that they might 
be converted and be healed, but the Lord God would rather 
see a man never saved than to be saved, and then lost; He 
would rather speak by parables that some people might hear 
and yet not hear, and see and yet not see, than to see and 
hear, and then reject salvation, and be lost forever, with a 
double damnation. 

Just as the Lord Jesus Christ taught by parables to 
save immortal souls, and to save from double damnation, 
so as His servant I have been teaching you this long time 
that you might be saved and escape ruin. One year ago 
to-day I took the solemn vow in this Church to preach 
God's eternal truth for the salvation of souls. That God's 
rich blessing has been resting upon us is so evident that 
none but the purely stubborn could refuse to see the 
blessing. Let us to-day thank our God that He has done 
what has been done to His glory and for our eternal good. 
I have been instructing you in the pure Word of God 
that you might be saved, and it may be well to-day if I 
try to lead you in the path of right, not so much by show- 
ing you the narrow path that leads to heaven, as to call 
your attention to the wrong road in order that you may 
avoid it. We have in this beautiful parable to-day the 
workings of the devil who comes and picks up the seed 
of the Word of God and tries to rob you of it, in order- 
that he may take you down the eternal path of ruin. I 
therefore, for your admonition, call your attention this 
morning to 



234 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 



THE ROYAL ROAD TO RUIN. 

It was Milton who made Satan say, in Paradise Lost: 
"Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven." Satan 
wanted to be a king in heaven, and could not; therefore 
he chose rather to be a king in hell and reign there, than 
to be a servant in heaven, and for that reason I call this 
road to ruin the Royal Road to Ruin. There is a king 
of hell as well as a King of heaven, and in order that 
you may find and keep the road that leads to heaven, let 
me impress upon you the Royal Road to Ruin. 

I. If you want to go to ruin the road is easily found. 
Just keep the Word of God from your hearts forever. That 
is the first way to ruin. In the parable before us we 
have a large field, and the seed is sown. Some fell on 
the roadside, some fell on stony ground, some fell on 
thorny ground, some fell on good ground; but we can 
not fail to recognize that outside of this great field there 
is a field that is not sown at all. The first day of this 
month we read in our local papers of the finding of thirty 
men out in the desert of Nevada, who tried to cross but 
perished because they had no food to eat and no water 
to drink. Out in this world of sin there is a great desert, 
and in this desert there are people who do not hear the 
Word of God at all, and do not see the Word of God at 
all, and they are on the Royal Road to Ruin. Whenever 
you can show me a person who does not want to hear 
this Word of God, who would do anything to escape its 
hearing; whenever you can show me a person who does 
not want to look into a Bible, and does not want to read 
this Word, then I will show you one who is surely on the 
path to destruction. Jesus Christ cried out, in the words 
of this parable: "He that hath ears to hear, let him hear." 
Did you ever stop to think what a great blessing your ears 
are? Suppose you could not hear? Oh, how you would 
then begin to appreciate those ears that God gave you. 
God did not give you those ears simply to hear the song 
of birds in the morning, in the woods, and the songs of 
men, but He gave you those ears, first of all, that you 
might hear the preaching of God's Word, that you might 



SEXAGESIMAL. I':..") 

receive the seed of His eternal Word into your hearts. 
If this seed is kept away from your hearts, either by 
neglecting to hear or by refusing to see, then you may 
rest assured that you are on the Royal Road to Ruin. 
But you have already heard God's Word, so you do not 
belong to this first class of whom I have spoken. 

II. There is another way to ruin, and that is to keep 
the Word of God out of the heart, not only away from it, 
but out of it. 

"A sower went out to sow his seed, and as he sowed, 
some fell by the wayside; and it was trodden down, and 
the fowls of the air devoured it." In explaining this Jesus 
said: "Those by the wayside are those that hear; then 
cometh the devil and taketh away the Word out of their 
hearts, lest they should believe and be saved." You know 
very well if the seed is sown in the roadway and people 
drive backward and forward over that seed, they soon 
crush it, and it never finds root, because it does not go into 
the ground. By keeping the seed out of the ground no 
harvest comes, and the Lord Jesus Christ tells us that is 
the way to go to ruin. If you hear the Word of God and 
then let the devil take it right away from you, and it 
never goes into the heart — into that stony and hardened 
heart — you can expect no harvest. How many people 
there are who go to the house of God Sunday after Sun- 
day; they seem to sit there as if they were interested, 
and yet when they go home they do not know a single 
word that was said. They do not try to remember a single 
word of God; they do not try to let that message go down 
into their hearts at all; they have gone to church it may 
be nearly all their lives, and yet they do not remember 
a single impression; their hearts are as hard as the brick 
pavement; as hard as the trodden road. Never a single 
seed has gone down; it lies on the surface a few moments 
then the devil comes along and takes it off for fear it 
might take root, and the result is there is no harvest, and 
they have gone down the road to eternal ruin. 

I tell you, you are responsible for the use of your ears 
in the house of God, and you are responsible for the im- 
pression this Word makes upon your hearts. Therefore, 






23G the Great gospel. 

you belong now to this second class. I do not care how 
well you have been instructed to the present hour; I 
do not care how well you are hearing God's Word to-day, 
if these words that I am speaking shall be forgotten to- 
morrow; if you go out into the world again and go and 
serve the devil and your own flesh in the world instead of 
keeping this good seed in your hearts, you are going to 
go the road to ruin. 

III. There is still another way to go the Eoyal Eoad 
to Ruin, and that is to receive the Word of God on a stony 
heart. 

"And some fell upon a rock, and as soon as it was 
sprung up, it withered away, because it lacked moisture." 
In explanation Jesus Christ said: "They on the rock are 
they which, when they hear, receive the Word with joy; 
and these have no root, which for a while believe, and in 
the time of temptation fall away." 

1. We have in this picture a scene of what I might 
call a glad revival and a sad survival. Let me, instead 
of calling it a glad revival, call it a shallow revival. Very 
much has been said for and against the revival. No true 
Christian will ever say a word against a true revival, but 
we are warned by the Lord Jesus Christ Himself to beware 
of the shallow revival. We have before us to-day the pic- 
ture of a farmer going out into the field, scratching around 
on the top of the surface, hurriedly sowing his seed, har- 
rowing it, and in a very short time you will see the field 
covered with wheat. It looks like the promise of a won- 
derful harvest, while the other man is plowing deeply 
and getting along slowly in the other field. It looks as 
if the first farmer were a prosperous farmer, as if he 
knew more than the other. But time passes on, and lo 
and behold, the first farmer's field is covered with dying 
wheat. It never produced a harvest because it was shal- 
low; the rock was under it, and when the sun beat down 
upon it, it withered and there was no harvest. There you 
have a picture of many a church which seems to think that 
the way to build up is to hurriedly create an excitement 
and bring all the people together and have such prayers 



SEXAGESIMA. 231 

as yon never had before, and such excitement as you 
never had before, and such crowds as you never had 
before, and make Christians in fifteen or twenty min- 
utes, while other churches use years and years. The re- 
sult is that those churches instructing deeply in God's 
Word are made to believe that they are behind the times; 
they are made to believe there is a better way; and lo 
and behold, as time passes on, where are the hundreds 
who were received in a short meeting of two or three 
weeks? Where are they? I remember when a boy going 
to a certain meeting one night; the snow was deep, the 
sleighing was good, the house was crowded. The min- 
ister, seeing the crowd in the church, and some not able 
to gain admittance cried out: "The Spirit of God has 
moved the people to come," and the members there cried 
out "Amen." It looked as though a great revival were 
in the neighborhood. Time passed on, and the rains fell 
and the snow melted, and lo and behold, a few people were 
sitting in the church. Where was the revival then? One 
man walked up to that minister and said: "It was not the 
Spirit of God as much as the snow that brought the people." 
They did not come any more. It was shallow ground; it 
was shallow sowing, and the result every time is a sad 
harvest. 

2. "They on the rock are they which, when they hear, 
receive the Word with joy; and these have no root, which 
for awhile believe, and in time of temptation fall avvay." 
s The more I study the Word N of God, and I have studied 
it all my life, the more I teach it, and I have taught it 
for eighteen years, the more I am convinced of the fact 
that there is nothing that will make people well grounded 
in God's Word and in their faith, and able to resist trials 
and temptations and make them stand though the heavens 
fall, except a solid plowing in God's Word, and a deep 
plowing, that means more than shallowness and joy for 
a moment. There is no trouble to get the showing and 
the promise of a harvest when the sun first shines and 
the spring rains fall, but what we w^ant is a harvest that 
will stand when the hot sun of June and July is shining 



238 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

down upon it; what we want is a harvest that will bring 
forth grain, and good flour and bread. Therefore study 
deeply God's Holy Word. 

If you want to go to ruin, just be satisfied with what 
little you know now. Do not imagine for a single moment 
that you have learned all you need to know. We have 
simply been scratching around the surface of God's Word ; 
we have simply led you up to the hill of Calvary to find 
Jesus Christ, the only Savior; but there is plowing to be 
done in the future; there is deeper sowing to be done in 
the future, and if you stop where you are now and simply 
rest upon the joy and the pleasure of this day in coming 
to your Lord and vour God, it will not be Ions: until trials 
will come, and temptations will come, and you will be lost 
to the Church and lost to your God, and lost to heaven, 
on the sure and certain road to ruin. 

IV. There is still another way to go down the road 
to ruin, and that is to receive the Word of God on a thorny 
heart. You may say, "I do not know that my heart is 
thorny." The chestnut does not know that it is thorny; 
the chestnut is a very smooth nut, but it rests inside of a 
covering of thorns. Your heart may be a very smooth 
heart, as smooth as the chestnut, but remember that you 
may have that heart surrounded with thorns that will 
bring you down to the road of ruin. 

"And some fell among thorns; and the thorns sprang 
up with it and choked it." Explaining that, Jesus says: 
■"Arid that which fell among thorns are they, which, when 
they have heard, go forth, and are choked with cares 
and riches and pleasures of this life, and bring no fruit 
to perfection." 

Oh, how sad the farmer feels when his trees are covered 
with fruit, and it is almost ripe, and some morning he 
comes out and finds it has all fallen down before it was 
ripe — how discouraging! And how discouraged the good 
Lord must feel when He finds people who were taken into 
the Church and are almost ready for the eternal harvest, 
but now they are falling down — not ripe — falling down 
before they are prepared to meet their God! Beware of 
the thornv heart. 



SEXAGESIMA. 239 

1. What makes the heart thorny? We are told by 
the Savior that cares and riches and pleasures of this life 
— the desire for these fills the heart with thorns and it 
never brings fruit to perfection. What do we mean by 
cares? The Lord Jesus Christ explained that when Lie 
said, "What shall we eat, what shall we drink, and where- 
with shall we be clothed?" There are the three ques- 
tions that pertain to the cares of the world. 

Dear hearers in Christ, you cannot have that heart 
of cares in you without throwing thorns out against God's 
eternal Word. Why do you ask the question, "What shall 
we eat?" Is that not a thorn pricking the hand of God 
that has fed you all this time? Have you not been fed 
from your infancy until the present time? Are you go- 
ing to ask the question in the future, "How can I be fed?" 
when God's hand has always fed you? Stop priding His 
hand with your thorns. 

Shall we ask the question, "Wherewith shall I be 
clothed?" With what have you been clothed in the past? 
Whence came those garments on your back this morning? 
Did they not come from your God? Will not your God, 
who has clothed you in the past, who has fed you in the 
past, who has never permitted you to starve until this 
moment, care for you in the future? But if the question 
comes all the time, "Oh, what shall I do — what shall I 
do?" it is piercing the very love of God, it is piercing 
the very mercy of God, it is piercing the very Providence 
of God; it is throwing out your thorns against the seed 
of His Word, and you never can bring forth a harvest to 
perfection, but will be sure to go down the path of ruin. 
The Lord God knows how to take care of you the rest 
of your life; He knows the day that you will die, and 
the very moment when you will pass into eternity. He 
knows what you will have to endure between this hour 
and that, and the trials will be no heavier than you need, 
just as heavy as you need, and He will help you to bear 
them. Therefore, thank God every day, not only for your 
great blessings, but for your trials and troubles, which 
you may not understand, but He does. 



24:0 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

2. Some, He says, are choked with the cares, and 
riches, and pleasures of this life. Kiches and pleasures! 
Some people are living for uo other purpose than to ac- 
cumulate wealth. Their one question is, "How can I make 
another. dollar?" "How can I make a fortune — how may 
I get wealth?" and just as soon as you make that the prime 
object of your life, to become a wealthy man, just as soon 
as you set your heart on riches and are willing to make 
everything else subserve that principle of getting more 
and more of this world's goods, just so sure you are mak- 
ing it as impossible for yourself to get to heaven as it is 
for a camel to go through a needle's eye; just so sure you are 
going to forget God's Word, the Holy Communion, the 
Sunday-school and family worship; just so sure you are 
going to take the good seed of God's Word and crowd it 
out wift your thorny life, and the result will be no har- 
vest but the harvest of eternal ruin. 

And that is just as true with regard to the pleasures 
of this life. People seem to think that we ministers of 
the Gospel are not as charitable as we ought to be when 
we talk about the pleasures of this world. They say, 
"Shall we not have pleasure?" Yes, of course, we should 
have pleasure. Dear friends, the greatest pleasure in the 
world is to do right; the greatest pleasure in the world 
is not only te do good, but to do the very best thing that 
can be done every moment. Show me a person who is 
living for no other purpose than to be entertained; a 
person always looking for some way to reach higher en- 
joyment of worldly character; show me a person willing 
to look out for a good time and make everything else 
subserve that purpose, and I will show you a heart so 
full of thorns that no good seed of the Word of God can 
take root there. 

I notice in our large congregation how some people are 
always willing to be at the teachers' meetings, at the 
Thursday evening services, always willing to be at divine 
services, provided there is no lecture, provided there is 
no entertainment, provided there is no show, provided there 
is no lodge meeting, provided there is not this or that 
going on; anything else first, and God's Word last. Yon 



SEXAGESIMA. 241 

might just as well take a handful of thorns and thrust 
them into the face of your God as to live that kind of a 
thorny life. Therefore, if you are going to seek the 
pleasures of this ungodly world in preference to keeping 
a place in your hearts for the penetrating divine seed which 
God is planting, then you are on the sure road to ruin. 
And now that I have shown you the Royal Road to Euin, 
I hope the Holy Spirit will help you to avoid it; and I 
direct your attention to the road that leads to heaven — 
the royal road above. 

While there are four kinds of soil and only one kind of 
seed, there is only one part of that ground that brings 
forth a harvest; three of them never bring harvests at 
all; two Of them receive the good seed but bring forth 
no harvest; the thorny ground has the good seed, but 
brings forth no harvest; the stony ground has the good 
seed, but brings forth no harvest; there is only one ground 
that brings forth a harvest. 

"And other fell on good ground, and sprang up and 
bare fruit an hundred fold. And when He had said these 
things He cried: 'He that hath ears to hear, let him 
hear."' Explaining this, Jfesus said: "But that on the 
good ground are they, which in an honest and good heart, 
having heard the Word, keep it, and bring forth fruit with 
patience." 

Now, dear friends, I will tell you what kind of revival 
I believe in. I believe in the kind of revival that Jesus 
Christ believed in; I believe in that kind of revival that 
Louis Harms, that great missionary of Hermannsburg, be- 
lieved in; I believe in a revival where the Word of God 
is sown in a mellow heart, in a deeply plowed heart, in a 
clean heart, and in a fruit-bearing heart. 

1. Let the Word of God be sown into a mellow heart. 
That seed was good, but the road was hard; it could not 
bring forth a harvest. If an angel of God were to preach 
to you to-day, if the Son of God, Himself, were to preach 
to you, if you are going to keep your hearts as hard as 
stone, if your hearts are never going to melt in mellow- 
ness, there is no chance for a harvest. Then pray God 
that He may give vou the true spirit of repentance. Rc- 
t6 



242 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

pent of your sins to-day. It was your sins and mine that 
nailed Jesus Christ to the cross on Calvary. All your past 
life you have been sinning against a holy and righteous 
God; then repent of your sins, and open your hearts, that 
the seed of God's eternal Word may go down and bring 
forth a harvest. 

2. Furthermore, plow deeply. It makes no difference 
if the seed is good, and if the seed is covered up with, 
ground, if below the shallow ground there is the hard 
rock, the burning sun will destroy the harvest. Therefore, 
let the Holy Word of God, which you have heard so often 
in the past, be before your eyes daily. Plow down deep 
into your hearts; go deeper and deeper into God's Word, 
so that this seed may go down deeper, and deeper, and 
deeper, and surely you will be on the road to heaven in- 
stead of to ruin. 

3. And then keep a clean heart. You cannot any more 
expect to get a harvest with Satan, and the world, and 
the flesh ruling you than you could expect to reap a good 
harvest if you would sow the field with thorns. In other 
words, salvation means, "Create in me a clean heart, O 
God, and renew a right spirit within me"; it means that 
the thorns must be pulled out by the roots and not simply 
cut off at the top of the ground; it means if your past life 
has not been right, by the help of God now try to make 
it right. Not that you shall be as perfect as the angels 
of heaven — not yet — but all of us can more and more 
strive, by the grace of God, to live a clean life. If you are 
in bad company, get out. "Evil communications corrupt 
good manners." If you are in the company of people who 
are trying to ruin you instead of trying to elevate you, 
get out of that kind of company; if you have tempta- 
tions within you to overcome that are great and masterly, 
pray God for help; depend not upon your own strength; 
ask the guidance of God and wisdom from on high, and 
then go on, with a clean heart, every day asking His for- 
giveness, and living nearer and nearer to Him, 

4. And then bring forth fruit to perfection. In other 
words, do not be a tree standing out in the orchard never 
bearing any fruit. Begin to do something for God. Ee- 



SEXAGESIMA. 243 

member that Jesus said: "Go work to-day in my vine- 
yard." The reason some people never grow in Christianity 
is because they do not exercise themselves with the grace 
that God has given them. No man can do anything toward 
his own regeneration — it is a gift of the Holy Spirit. No 
man can save himself; it is the gift of God, lest we should 
boast; but when we are saved, then God gives us strength 
to go on and work in His vineyard, and therefore He 
says: "Work out your salvation with fear and trembling." 
If I were to take this arm of mine and tie it in a sling for 
one year it would be helpless; its strength would be gone; 
the only way to keep strength in that arm is to use it; 
the way children learn to walk, is by walking; the only 
way you can grow in strength and grace, and plow deeply 
and bring forth a harvest of the fruit that will please 
God on this road to heaven, is to use every gift that God 
has given you, and every power that you are blessed with, 
to His glory and for the upbuilding of His kingdom. Then 
go into the Sunday-school at once and take part in God's 
work there; come to divine services every chance you have, 
and have your soul fed on the bread of life; and when 
the Lord's Supper is administered, come to the Holy Com- 
munion and partake of the body and blood, and make diligent 
use of the means of grace. Soon the end will come and then 
you will find it is a blessed thing to have avoided the royal 
road that leads to ruin, and to have found the narrow road 
that leads to life eternal. May God grant that you and I 
may find each other in His presence on that last great day. 
Amen. 



QUINQUAGESIMA. 



THE PASSION PROCLAMATION. 



Luke 18 : 31-43. 



'^r* 9 

c 



^*/^^HEN He took unto Him the twelve, and said unto them: 'Behold, 
we go up to Jerusalem, and all things that are written by the 
prophets concerning the Son of man shall be accomplished. For 
He shall be delivered unto the Gentiles, and shall be mocked, and spite- 
fully entreated, and spitted on ; and they shall scourge Him and put Him 
to death ; and the third day He shall rise again.' And they understood none of 
these things : and this saying was hid from them, neither knew they the things 
which were spoken. And it came to pass that as He was come nigh unto Jer- 
icho, a certain blind man sat by the wayside begging ; and hearing the multi- 
tude pass by, he asked what it meant ; and they told him that Jesus of Naza- 
reth passeth by; and he cried, saying, 'Jesus, Thou son of David, have mercy 
on me.' And they which went before rebuked him, that he should hold his 
peace ; but he cried so much the more : "Thou Son of David, have mercy on 
me.' And Jesus stood, and commanded him to be brought unto Him, and 
when he was come near, He asked him, saying: 'What wilt thou that I 
shall do unto thee?' And he said: 'Lord, that I may receive my sight.' 
And Jesus said unto him, 'Receive thy sight ; thy faith hath saved thee.' 
And immediately he received his sight, and followed Him, glorifying God; 
and all the people, when they saw it, gave praise unto God." 

Sanctify us, O Lord, through Thy Truth; 
Thy Word is Truth. Amen. 



Beloved in the Lord : — 

We are standing this morning before the portals of the 
greatest tragedy that ever took place on earth. In the 
old Anglo-Saxon language there is a word called Lent, 
which meant to lengthen, and, in time, because it meant 
lengthen, and in the spring of the year the days grow 
longer, and Jesus Christ died for the sins of the world, 
this word was transferred to the Church of God to mean 

*244 



QUINQUAGESIMA. 245 

the sufferings of Christ. We are standing before the 
portals of that season of the year called Lent, in which 
we commemorate the aw T ful sufferings of Jesus Christ to 
save the world. Let me this morning announce to you 

THE PASSION PROCLAMATION. 

And let us notice in this Passion Proclamation: 

I. A woeful state of darkness. 
II. A wonderful .state of light. 

I. We find here a woeful state of darkness. 

"Then He took unto Him the twelve, and said unto 
them: 'Behold we go up to Jerusalem, and all things that 
are written by the prophets concerning the Son of man 
shall be accomplished. For He shall be -delivered unto 
the Gentiles, and shall be mocked, and spitefully entreated, 
and spitted on; and they shall scourge Him and put Him 
to death; and the third day He shall rise again. 7 And 
they understood none of these things; and this saying 
was hid from them, neither knew they the things which 
were spoken." 

1. Oh! what darkness in their ignorance. Could lan- 
guage express this journey to Jerusalem plainer than Jesus 
did? He told them there on that road that the people 
would deliver Him to the Gentiles, that He would be 
mocked, that He would be spitefully entreated, and that 
they should spit on Him; that they should scourge Him, 
and that they should kill Him. Could language make this 
any plainer? And yet, after being with their Savior for 
three long years, and hearing this great truth from day 
to day, and having read the same great truth in the 22d 
Psalm and in the 53rd chapter of Isaiah, they still stand 
before Him, ignorant, not knowing what He meant. 

Oh, dear friends, sin has made this world so dark with 
ignorance that as long as it stands we shall feel it as it 
was felt in Egypt. It is ignorance that we must contend 
with to-day everywhere. The only reason that any man 
on earth is not a Christian is because he is still in ignor- 
ance. Do not tell me that a man can live in this civilized 
world, this great life that God has given him to live, 



24G THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

Avith all the light of His Holy Word shining around him 
on all hands; do not tell me that that man can live and 
die in his sins and be an enlightened man. The total ig- 
norance of the people on that day is but an emblem of the 
ignorance that is found to-day in spiritual matters. When 
Adam and Eve sinned in the garden of Eden, not only 
did the sun sink that night in the western horizon, but the 
sun of the light of the mind, of the light of the true re- 
ligion and holiness, and knowledge, the sun of the image of 
God, went down that night, and it has been down ever 
since, except when the Almighty hand of grace has raised 
it up and permitted it to shine in the hearts of the newly 
regenerated. 

2. That proclamation was not only sounded forth into 
a world of woeful darkness of ignorance, but there was 
also a woeful darkness of blindness. On that road through 
Jericho to Jerusalem sat a blind man, and that blind 
man, who had never seen the light of the sun, whose eyes 
had never looked upon the beauty of God's creation, was 
only a type of the world that day, sitting down along the 
highway of spiritual blindness, not willing to see the great 
things that God had in store for them. 

When we look around to-day, how many people there 
are who cannot see the beauty of God's Holy Word; who 
cannot see the beauty of God's Holy Church; who can 
not see the beauty of men of God assembling together and 
worshiping the Father, Son and Holy Ghost! How many 
people there are who cannot see the beauty of grace; the 
beauty of the song of the blood of Calvary; who cannot 
see the beauty of being children of God and worshiping 
with the children of God from Sunday to Sunday. The 
world is still dark with blindness. 

3. On that day there was not only a blind man sit- 
ting along the roadway, but that blind man was poor. He 
was a beggar. "And it came to pass that as He was come 
nigh unto Jericho, a certain blind man sat by the way- 
side begging." Here are two evils in one man. You and 
I do not realize to-day how much we ought to thank God 
for our good eyes, for our senses, for all the good bones 
in our bodies, for the health and strength which we pos- 



QUINQUAGESIMA. 247 

sess. A few years ago I had lying on the bed in one of 
my parishioners' homes a young man of twenty-one years, 
who was one of the best machinists and mechanics in the 
city of Columbus, but he was brought down on his back, 
and there he lay for fifteen long months, neither able to 
turn to the right nor to the left, and I shall never forget 
that day when I entered his presence and he said, "I 
would give all that I am worth if I could just lie down 
on the floor, as I once could, and turn over." Never in* 
all my life did I feel that I was such an unthankful wretch 
as I was that day. You and I can roll over, and we 
never thank God that we can do so; you and I can stand 
up, and we never thank God that we can stand up; you 
and I can run, and we never thank God that we can run. 
Every drop of blood coursing through our veins this morn- 
ing, giving us health and strength to be here, is a gift of 
God. This man never saw. If you and I were blind, we 
should know how to thank God for our eyes; if you and 
I were deaf, we should know how to thank God for our 
ears; if you and I had absolutely no taste, we should 
know how to thank God for taste; if you and I were to 
lose our sense of touch, we should know how to thank God 
for feeling. But we unthankful wretches, just because 
God has showered the blessings down upon us, go on 
through the world murmuring and grumbling, thinking 
we are so poor and so miserable that we have no reason 
to pray. Here sat a man who never saw anything; a man 
who, because he could not see, could not travel, could not 
work, and he had to depend upon the charity of the people 
who walked by the roadside — he sat there begging. He 
was no poorer in this world's goods than the natural man 
is spiritually. The natural man who perceives not the 
things of the Spirit of God because they must be spiritually 
discerned, is a poor, poor blind sinner, sitting along the 
roadway, and if one such should happen to be here this 
morning, I hope he will go out rich, seeing. 

4. Not only was it a dark world into which this pro- 
clamation went, of poverty, blindness, and ignorance, but 
it was a world in which there was much of the spirit of 
persecution. Think of Jesus, who went about doing good, 



248 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

and nothing but good — and what was the treatment He 
received? According to this Passion Proclamation, "He 
shall be delivered unto the Gentiles, and shall be mocked, 
and spitefully entreated, and spitted on; and they shall 
scourge Him, and put Him to death." We cannot blame 
these poor disciples for not understanding that great truth. 
If you and I had Jesus Christ living with us for three 
long years, raising the dead, healing the sick, and doing 
nothing but good, and we were told that man is so mean 
and so wicked that he will take His good hands and drive 
nails through them; that he will take that good heart and 
thrust a spear into it; that he will take that back and 
scourge it; that man would walk up into the face of his 
Maker and spit into it; of all the meanness and the wicked- 
ness that you can think of, there never was an act so 
wicked and mean that man in his natural state would not 
do. If you have very much faith in humanity, I want 
you to understand that I have not; if you have very much 
faith in humanity, I want you to understand that God has 
not. Man in his natural state, until he is regenerated, 
is so mean and so wicked that there is nothing so low 
that he has not done and has not tried to do more. That 
was a dark world to receive this proclamation in, was it 
not? And yet, my dear friends, word for word, this proc- 
lamation was carried out, not only by man, or by men, 
but by a government representing the highest civilization 
on earth at that time — by Rome, under Pontius Pilate, 
Jesus Christ died. 

5. That darkness was greater than simply persecu- 
tion. The darkness of that age was just as it is to-day, a 
darkness of being lost. Who was the poor blind man sit- 
ting along the roadside that day? He is called in the 
Bible Bartimams, the son of Timseiis. No difference b} T 
what name he was known, when Jesus stepped up to him 
afterwards and said, "Thy faith hath saved thee," He re- 
vealed to the world that before those words were spoken 
Bartima3us was lost; and Bartimseus lost on that day 
was but a picture of every man on earth to-day who has 
not been saved by the Lord Jesus Christ. "He that be- 
lieveth and is baptized shall be saved; and he that be- 



QUINQUAUES1MA. 249 

lieveth not shall be damned." And there yon have the 
picture of the lost world into which this, proclamation 
was poured on that day. 

II. This Passion Proclamation, however, revealed not 
only a woeful darkness, but (/ wonderful light. 

1. This wonderful light, consisted, first of all, of Reve- 
lation. "And all things that are written by the prophets 
concerning the Son of man shall be accomplished.' 7 What 
was written in the prophets? Do you know what is writ- 
ten in the 22nd Psalm? Do you know what is contained 
in the 53rd Chapter of Isaiah? Some men tell us they 
do not believe the Bible is God's Word. I defy any man 
on earth to go on a hill-top alone or into his room 
alone, open up the 22d Psalm and read it through, and 
then turn to the 53rd chapter of Isaiah and read it through ; 
then turn to the Gospels and read of the crucifixion of 
the Lord Jesus Christ, and if that man says to me then 
that the Bible is not the inspired Word of God, I will say 
he is either not telling the truth, or he knows the truth 
that it is the Kevelation of God's Holy Word. A man a 
few years ago went to Jerusalem from the far East in 
order to make a survey of the Holy Lands. He was one of 
the most noted Jewish lawyers of the far East. When he 
went he took a Testament with him, not because he be- 
lieved it was the Bible, but because he believed it would 
help him to find out the true geography of the Holy Lands. 
While seated on the hillside one day he began to read 
about that land, and his eye fell upon the margin referring 
him to the 22nd Psalm and the 53rd chapter of Isaiah; 
he read them over, and instead of finding out the geography 
of the Holy Land along the Mediterranean Sea, he found 
the Holy Land in heaven, and became one of the greatest 
converts to the true faith among the Jews, and at this day 
is preaching the Gospel of Christ to twenty-five thousand 
people every Sunday. 

This Passion Proclamation reveals to us that Jesus 
Christ said that every word of the Old Testament must 
be fulfilled to the letter, and it was fulfilled to the letter. 
And that is the light that goes out into the world to-day. 
I do not care what any Ingersoll says; I do not care what 



250 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

any critic of theological seminaries says; I do not care 
what any theologian on earth says to the contrary, the 
Son of God has settled it once and forever that the 
Old Testament is the Word of God and He will ful- 
fill it, if He has to die to fulfill it; and He did die to 
fulfill it. Where do you ever find that Jesus Christ found 
fault with the Bible?" "Why," some one says, "this very 
lesson that you have to-day is a contradiction." "Where- 
in?" Luke tells us that Jesus was going to Jericho when 
He met the blind beggar and gave him sight. Mark tells 
us that w^hen Jesus went out of Jericho He met the blind 
beggar and gave him sight; and Matthew tells us that 
when Jesus went out of Jericho He saw two blind beggars 
and gave them sight. "Now," says the so-called wise 
man, '"Don't you see the Bible contradicts itself?" No, 
I do not see it. Do you? I have been hunting for these 
contradictions that others have found for the last twenty 
years, and every time, when I have solved the contradic- 
tion, I have found it in the head of some ignorant man 
instead of in the Word of God; and so I find this is not 
a contradiction. The whole thing is very plain. Jesus 
went into Jericho and there sat a blind man, and He gave 
him sight; Luke tells us He went through Jericho and 
came out on the other side; and Mark tells us He found 
a blind man there and healed him, and there is the truth 
that Mark tells us; and now comes Matthew and tells 
us the other story; this first blind man is healed on this 
side, goes along with them, and comes out on the other 
side, and there they were, both blind men, healed, stand- 
ing on the other side. Where is the contradiction? The 
fact is Jesus healed two men at Jericho, one on one side 
and one on the other, and by the time the second man 
was healed, they were both standing there. Is there any- 
thing strange about that? I tell you when this Book was 
given to the world, it was one of the greatest lights that 
ever entered the world — greater than the sun — greater 
than the moon — greater than all the constellations. If 
all the constellations of heaven were to come down so 
near the earth that we could touch them, we could not 
spell out where God is, nor could we spell out who God 



QUINQUAGESIMA. 251 

is. I hold in my hand a Book that says the Word of God 
is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path, and as 
I look into this Word, I find a voice from heaven saying, 
"This is My beloved Son in whom I am well pleased," 
and this Son is Jesus Christ, and He, this Son, says, "I 
and the Father are one,' 7 and the Father is up there; and 
another, "The Holy Spirit came down in the form of a 
dove," and He is here. I find that Jesus says, "Go out 
into all the world and make disciples in the name of the 
Father that cried from Heaven, This is My beloved Son; 
and baptize all nations in the name of that Father, 
and the Son, and the Holy Spirit that came down;" and 
I know who God is, and I found it in the Word of God. 
Peter said, "We have also a more sure word of prophecy; 
whereunto ye do well that ye take heed, as unto a light 
that shineth in a dark place, until the day dawn, and the 
day star arise in your hearts." Would to God that this 
day star would arise in your hearts this morning, and 
you would have the greatest light the world has ever 
received. 

2. It is not only a light of Kevelation, but that Pas- 
sion Proclamation gave us also the light of the Redeemer. 
Jesus Christ loved to 'call Himself by that sweet name, 
"the Son of man." "All things that are written by the 
prophets concerning the Son of man shall be accom- 
plished." But after He told them what should happen to 
the Son of man, that He should actually be crucified on 
Calvary's hill, the thought came to Him undoubtedly, 
"They will not doubt that I am Son of man when hang- 
ing on the cross, but they may forget one thing when I 
am hanging there, and that is that I am, after all, the 
Son of God," and so, on the very road to the cross, He 
meets a blind man and says, "Beceive thy sight" — and 
he saw — saw his God — saw not only the Son of man, 
but the Son of God — the Redeemer — the God-man. Do 
you not know that is a great light in the world, Jesus 
Christ, Himself, the God-man? He had to become man 
in order to fulfill the law for us, but He could not have 
fulfilled that law for us and redeemed us if He had not 
been able to pay the price. You cannot pay a thousand 



252 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

dollar debt with one cent, and a world of lost sinners, 
each one worth more than the world, could not be re- 
deemed by a good man — could not be redeemed by an 
angel — could not be redeemed by anything except the 
only heir of God, Jesus Christ, the God-man. He is the 
Kedeemer that is the Light of the World. 

3. We have not only the light of the Kedeemer, but 
of redemption itself. Even if Jesus Christ had come to 
the world and spent one-third of a century here, that 
would not have saved you and me, if He had not poured 
out His life-blood for us. You will remember that God 
cannot lie, and you will remember that God said, "The 
soul that sinneth, it shall die." When sin came into the 
world, the wages of sin was death, and had it not been 
that God died for us, then God could not have saved us 
without being guilty of telling an untruth. God is the 
Truth. "I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life, and no 
man cometh to the Father but by Me." So the Lord God, 
in order that He might forever remain Truth — in order 
that He might forever remain God, died and paid the 
penalty, and told the truth, and still will let the sinner 
live. That is light, and that is the only, light for a poor 
sinner in this world, that he has a Savior who actually 
redeemed him; and therefore, as has been said before 
from this pulpit, we do not want to sing, "I want to be 
redeemed," because we are redeemed. Every man on earth 
is redeemed; every man in hell is redeemed; the price 
has been paid. Here is the light, that salvation is come 
into the world; and men received it not, is the darkness. 
We will take home with us to-day this great truth, that 
whether we die saved or lost, we have been redeemed. 
Thank God for redemption. 

4. We have here not only the light of redemption, we 
have also another light, and that is the light of resurrec- 
tion. "And the third day He shall rise again." The Lord 
Jesus Christ, in proclaiming His passion, not only looks 
forward to the cross, and into the grave, but He looks 
through the grave. He throws a light into the grave 
that never was there before. It is true, my friends, the 
dead were raised before Christ rose from the grave, but 



QUINQUAGBSIMA. 253 

they were always raised by the power of God; but we 
find that Christ arises by His own power, and conquers 
death, and throws a light into the grave, not only for 
Himself, but for you and for rne. No doubt you and I 
have some dear little spot in yonder cemetery where we 
love to go and think of the dear ones who are sleeping 
under the sod. How dark that grave would be had it 
not been for this great Passion Proclamation! But from 
the time that Jesus Christ proclaimed that He was going 
to the grave and w T ould rise again, He put into that grave 
a light — a light that shall light your resurrection and 
mine, and the resurrection of all our near and dear ones. 
Ah, dear friends, have you nothing to be thankful for? 
Can you this morning think of your dear ones sleeping 
in God's acre, arising by the power of this great Kedeemer, 
without going into this Lenten season with thanksgiving 
to God, that the grave once so dark is now so bright? 

5. We have in this Proclamation, finally, the great 
light of salvation. The whole picture of the saving of 
this blind man, is one of the most beautiful we can find 
of salvation. The Savior said to him: "Thy faith hath 
saved thee." The same voice comes to us this morning, 
in the very same condition. How was this blind man 
healed? How did his faith save him? Just exactly the 
same as your faith must save you, and as mine must save 
me. How did this blind man get his faith? The Bible does 
not tell us, but it is very plain from w^hat he said how he 
got it. The poor blind man had nothing else to do but to 
sit by the roadside day after day, basking in the sunlight, 
although he could not see the sun he could feel it, bask- 
ing in the sunlight, with his hand open for charity of 
those who might go by. It is a hard thing to pass a poor 
man without helping him, but it is doubly hard to pass a 
poor blind man and not help him, and as he sat there 
day by day, the news would come to him, time and again, 
"Why don't you go to Jesus; He is walking around in 
this region now, and even taking blind men and giving 
them their sight," and he says, "What, sight to a blind 
man? But He could not help a man like myself, born 
blind." "Yes, the other day there was a man, born blind, 



254 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

and Jesus stepped up to him and said to his eyes, 'Be thou 
opened/ and he saw as it were trees, and after a while 
he saw as well as any man." "Well, if I could just reach 
that Savior, if I could just come near to Him, I believe 
I should get help." On that day there was planted in 
the heart of that poor blind man the first seed of faith. 
From that day he was listening closely, if he might not 
hear the footsteps of Jesus, and every once in a while 
some one would come along, and he would say, "Do you 
know where Christ is? Have you heard anything of that 
One who is said to even be giving sight to the blind? 1 
would like so much to meet Him." And as he was listen- 
ing from day to day and hearing more and more of the 
wonderful things Jesus was doing in the Holy Land, thai, 
faith of his grew and grew; and just because he could 
not see, he could hear the better, and was listening and 
listening, if he might not hear some strange ' footsteps. 
One day while holding out his hand begging, he heard the 
tramp of feet coming upon the highway and he asks, "Who 
is coming?" Some one says, "Jesus of Nazareth passeth 
by." He made up his mind that help was coming, that 
'if He is coming I am going to make myself heard to-day 
if I have the chance.' He listened very closely until Jesus 
came close to him. He knew there was a Savior to come, 
and he knew that this Savior was to be the Son of David, 
and he knew that to help a poor blind man would mean 
mercy untold, and so he cried out, "Jesus, Thou Son of 
David, have mercy on me." But the people said, "Keep 
still. Don't you know that Jesus of Nazareth is passing 
by; and don't you hear the great multitude? There is no 
chance for you to-day. He has just sent forth His procla- 
mation that He is going to Jerusalem to die, and He will 
not stop for you." But the blind man said, "If He is 
going to Jerusalem and is going to die, this is my last 
opportunity and I want to see. Jesus, Thou Son of David, 
have mercy on me." "Keep quiet." "I will not keep quiet ; 
I am going to have help, God help me. Jesus, Thou Son 
of David, have mercy on me — on me — on me — me!" And 
he cried all the more, "Have mercy on me." 

And Jesus stood still. Mv dear friends, there was a 



QUINQUAGESIMA. 2.V> 

day when there was a great battle to be fought, and one 
of old cried out for the sun in the heavens to stand still, 
and it stood still; and the prayer of a beggar that day 
made the great Son of the heavens stand still. I tell you 
there is not a prayer from any lonely heart in the world, 
going up, that will not make heaven stand still, and so 
Jesus stood still that day. Do you notice that the faith 
in that beggar was born in the Word of God? Do you 
notice how faith cried out and watched every opportu- 
nity? Do you notice that this cry was repeated and re- 
peated until the Son of God stood still? 

And do you notice, in the next place, the obedience 
of this man? When Jesus stopped, He commanded him 
to come forth. He did not say, "Come to me, I am blind," 
but he leaped to the Savior; he went at the very first 
command. Oh, that we all would be obedient to God 
wlien He speaks. You all know that you should search 
the Scriptures, but some of you do not care whether you 
do or not; you all know that you should be baptized, but 
some of you live like heathen; you all know that God 
wants you to be Christians, but some of you do not care 
whether you are Christians or not; you all know that 
God wants you to pray, but some of you never utter one 
sincere prayer from the heart. This beggar did not stand 
there and pray for half an hour. Our prayers are often too 
long and not much in them. When a man prays the 
right kind of prayer, he sums it all up in a word or two, 
and this poor blind man prayed the right kind of prayer 
when he said, "That I might see." That was all there 
was in his prayer. What more could he ask? If he had 
prayed there for a day he could not have said more. I 
want to tell you if you this very morning would just lift 
your heart to God and say, "God, I want to see," your 
eyes would be opened. And so Jesus said, "Keceive thy 
sight." Oh, to think that a moment before there were 
those poor blind eyes between the beggar and the Son of 
God; they are opened, and he sees the Savior. The first 
thing those eyes ever saw was the Savior. God wants the 
first thing you see to be the Savior; He wants the first 
thing your little children see to be the Savior. W T hen 



256 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

the little children are born, give them to God immediately; 
don't wait a minute; get down on your knees, father, and 
give your newly born child to God in that minute. Pray 
for your children before they are born, that, like John 
the Baptist, they may be filled with the Spirit of God be- 
fore they see the world. 

You and I may have come here very poor this morn- 
ing; we may have come here very blind, but there is no 
reason why we should go out of this house with eyes still 
closed. Let us hear God's Word as the blind beggar did 
and appropriate this Word to ourselves as he did; let us 
make use of every opportunity as he did; let us cry as 
he did, "Lord, that I might receive my sight"; let us obey 
as he did and pray as he did, and our eyes shall be opened, 
and we shall see God — Jesus Christ, the God-man, as the 
only Savior of the world. May you see Him this morn- 
ing to His eternal glory and to your eternal welfare, is my 
prayer. Amen. 

PRAYER. 

Our Heavenly Father, this world was created in the light, and it 
was sin that put it in darkness, and it is Thy great Word that again has 
thrown light into this darkness. We pray Thee, O God, that this lamp, which 
is still the lamp unto our feet and the light unto our path, may lighten our 
souls on the great path to Calvary's hill, and to the grave, and through it, 
into the presence of our Heavenly Father. We come before Thee this morn- 
ing to thank Thee as we never did before, for every drop of blood in our 
veins, for every bone in our bodies and for every sense that Thou hast given 
us, and for all Thy blessings which Thou hast showered down upon us every 
day and hour ; and we commend our body and soul into Thy custody, and 
we pray Thee for the spirit of humility and forgiveness and charity which 
it is Thy will that we should have toward each other, in order that we may 
have a charity that will be every morning poured out of Thy heart into ours. 
Do Thou help that every soul in this church this morning may be strength- 
ened spiritually for the battles of the coming week and the coming life, and 
should any of us have heard this morning our last sermon in this world, 
may we, when we close our eyes here, open them in the presence of Jesus, 
who said, "Receive thy sight," and may we then see face to face, our Lord 
and Master, and all the great things that He has prepared for us. We ask 
it all in the name of Jesus Christ, who taught us to pray : 

Our Father, who art in heaven ; Hallowed be Thy name ; Thy kingdom 
come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven ; Give us this day our 
daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass 
against us ; lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil ; for Thine 
"is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever and ever. Amen. 



FIRST SUNDAY IN LENT— INVOCAVIT. 



THAT SAME OLD SERPENT. 



Matt. 4 : 1-11. 



^f^^^HEN was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted 
of the devil And when He had fasted forty days and forty nights, 
He was afterward an hungered. And when the tempter came to Him 
he said, 'If Thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made 
bread ;' but He answered and said, Tt is written : Man shall not live by bread 
alone, but by every word that preceedeth out of the mouth of God.' Then the 
devil taketh *Him up into the holy city, and setteth Him on a pinnacle of the 
temple, and saith unto Him, 'If Thou be the Son of God, cast Thyself down ; 
for it is written : He shall give His angels charge concerning Thee ; and in 
their hands they shall bear Thee up, lest at any time Thou dash Thy foot 
against a stone.' Jesus said unto him, Tt is written again : Thou shall not 
tempt the Lord thy God.' Again, the devil taketh Him up into an exceed- 
ing high mountain, and sheweth Him all the kingdoms of the world, and the 
gloty of them ; and saith unto Him, 'All these things will I give Thee, if 
Thou wilt fall down and worship me.' Then saith Jesus unto him, 'Get thee 
hence Satan : for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and 
Him only shalt thou serve.' Then the devil leaveth Him, and, behold, angels 
came and ministered unto Him.'" 

Sanctify us, O Lord, through Thy Truth ; 
Thy Word is Truth. Amen. 



Dearly Beloved in Christ: 

That sermon is never a failure that has God's Word in it, 
and in order that we may at least have one good sermon in 
this church, I thought I would make my introduction consist 
entirely of God's Word this morning. 

"Would to God ye could bear with me a little in my 
folly: and indeed bear with me. For I am jealous over 
you with godly jealousy; for I have espoused you to one 
husband, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to 
Christ. But I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent be- 

17 257 



258 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

guiled Eve through his subtilty, so your minds should be 
corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ. For if he 
that cometh preacheth another Jesus, whom we have not 
preached, or if ye receive another spirit, which ye have 
not received, or another gospel which ye have not accepted, 
ye might well bear with him. For I suppose I was not 
a whit behind the very chiefest apostles. But though I 
be rude in speech, yet not in knowledge; but we have been 
thoroughly made manifest among you in all things. Have 
I committed an offense in abasing myself that ye might be 
exalted, because I have preached to you the gospel of 
God freely? (2 Cor. 11, 1-7.) 

"And there was war in heaven: Michael and his angels 
fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his 
angels, and prevailed not; neither was their place found 
any more in heaven. And the great dragon was cast out, 
that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which de- 
ceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, 
and his angels were cast out with him. And I heard a 
loud voice saying in heaven, Now is come salvation, and 
strength, and the kingdom of our God, and the power of 
His Christ; for the accuser of our brethren is cast down, 
which accused them before our God day and night. And 
they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb, and by the 
word of their testimony; and they loved not their lives 
unto the death. Therefore rejoice, ye heavens, and ye that 
dwell in them. Woe to the inhabiters of the earth and 
of the sea! for the devil is come down unto you, having 
great wrath, because he knoweth that he hath but a short 
time. And when the dragon saw that he was cast unto 
the earth, he persecuted the woman which brought forth 
the man child. And to the woman were given two wings 
of a great eagle, that she might fly into the wilderness, 
into her place, where she is nourished for a time, and times, 
and half a time, from the face of the serpent. And the ser- 
pent cast out of his mouth water as a flood after the woman, 
that he might cause her to be carried away of the flood. 
And the earth helped the woman, and the earth opened 
her mouth, and swallowed up the flood which the dragon 
cast out of his mouth. And the dragon was wroth with 



FIRST SUNDAY IN LENT. 259 

the woman, and went to make war with the remnant of 
her seed, which keep the commandments of God, and have 
the testimony of Jesus Christ." (Kev. 12, 7-17.) 

We find, my dear friends, that in the last Book of 
the Bible Satan, or that old dragon, is called that old serpent. 
May the Holy Spirit help us this morning, as we dwell 
on that old serpent, to see him, that we may avoid him, and 
serve the Master whom he tempted, in to-day's lesson. I 
call your attention then, to 

THAT SAME OLD SERPENT. 

We find that Satan three times in the history of the 
Bible tempted the best men on earth. In the lesson of 
to-day, nearly two thousand years ago; in the 1st chapter 
of Job, at least thirty-five hundred years ago; and in the 
3rd chapter of the Bible, at least six thousand years ago; 
and to-day, all over the world, and if I can see, as I believe 
God helps me to see, that same old serpent that tempted 
Eve, that tempted Job, that tempted Christ, is in our midst, 
and may God help us to know him when he tempts us. 

I. That same old serpent always disguised himself. 

1. Go back to the first temptation in the garden of Eden, 
and behold Satan in the form of a serpent, disguising him- 
self before our first parents. 

2. We find that the same deception took place when 
he tempted Job. W 7 e are told that one day the sons of 
God came together and Satan was among them. In other 
words, when he came to that sacrifice he made them be- 
lieve that he himself was one of the sons of God. 

3. In the lesson of to-day we are told that when he 
came to Christ in the first temptation he is called the 
tempter; in the second he is called the devil; and in the last 
he is called Satan. Not until the last temptation did Jesus 
turn around and behold him as he actually was — Satan, 
that old serpent. One of our great commentators of recent 
years, Stier, says he believes that when Satan first ap- 
peared to Christ, he appeared as a good friend, a man, a 
good advisor; in the second temptation when he took Him 



260 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

up to the pinnacle of the temple, he appeared as an angel 
of light; and not until the third temptation did he appear- 
as the god of this world — Satan — but he disguised 
himself. 

4. And that old serpent which disguised itself in the 
garden of Eden, that old serpent which tried to appear as 
one of the sons of God down in the land of Uz, that same 
old serpent that tried to deceive the Lord Jesus Christ, that 
same old serpent to-day comes into our midst as a religious 
teacher, without Christ. I do not know of any more de- 
ceived man in all the world than the man who pretends 
to teach religion and leaves out the only Savior, Jesus 
Christ. Was there ever a time in the world when we had 
more religion than to-day, and was there ever a time when 
those who have religion had less of Christ than they. have 
to-day? Therefore, when any man comes to you, I do not 
care whether he be dressed in silk or not; I do not care 
whether he wear a white cravat or not; I do not care 
whether he wear a robe or not; no difference by what name 
he is known, layman or preacher, if he comes to you witli 
a kind of salvation through morality, if he comes to you 
trying to make you reach heaven 'without the only Savior, 
Jesus Christ, look upon that man as the old serpent dis- 
guised. 

II. Not only was that old serpent always disguised, 
but he was always permitted by the Lord God to test His dearest 
children, 

1. Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden were sinless, 
holy, created in the very image of their Maker. It was 
necessary that they receive a test. What is anything 
worth if it is not tested? And so it was God's own permis- 
sion that that angel hurled from heaven should test Adam 
and Eve. Why? Because they were dear, innocent chil- 
dren of God that must be tested as the father and mother 
of the world. 

2. Look at Job. God said of Job that he was a per- 
fect man, that he feared God and eschewed evil. God said 
of Job that he was the best man that lived in the world 
at that time; consequently it is even God's will that Job 
should be tested. When Satan came among the sons of 



FIRST SUNDAY IN LENT. 261 

God, he did not run up to Job and at once tempt him. God 
put the first question to him and said: "Hast thou con- 
sidered my servant Job? There is none on earth like him. 
Try him. Test him. I want him tested/' Unless you 
understand this principle of God, you will not understand 
this lesson of to-day 

3. "Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the wil- 
derness to be tempted of the devil." This Spirit was not 
Satan; it was not some spirit from hell; it was the same 
Holy Spirit that just before this came down like a dove on 
the Lord Jesus Christ when He was baptized. The Lord 
Jesus Christ was the second Adam, and as the first Adam 
had to be tried and tested in the garden of Eden, this 
second Adam must be tried and tested, because He is to 
redeem the world that the first Adam brought down to the 
curse. So the Spirit of God wants Jesus Christ tried; 
wants Him tested by that old serpent that crept into the 
garden of Eden, and that crept up into the land of Uz to 
try to kill Job. 

4. And so, my dear friends, He wants us tested. He 
wants us tested at the very time when we have been closest 
to God. Have you never noticed in your own experience 
that just then, when you have felt yourself in the presence 
of God as you never did before, when you were lifted the 
very highest in spiritual life, that it was followed by a 
temptation. This is especially true of the new convert. 
I will venture to say that of the fifty-seven who united 
with the Church here by confirmation and baptism a week 
ago last Sunday, they have already been tempted. I will 
dare say that the first time you partook of the Lord's 
body and blood, some one in the form of a man would come 
to you and thrust out a word here or a word there that 
would try your faith. New converts must be tested; God 
wants them tested. Let me urge upon you, young men and 
young women, when that first temptation comes, stand, as 
Christ stood, not as the first Adam and Eve did; stand as 
Job stood, and show to the world that you have the strength 
from on high that can bear the test. 

III. That old serpent was not only permitted by the 
Holy Spirit always to test the nearest and dearest chil- 



262 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

dren, but that same old serpent has always been very reli- 
gious. Do not forget that. Some people think of the devil 
as hating religion, and that is the reason they are always 
led around by the devil. The sooner you know that old 
serpent, the better you can avoid him. You will find that 
that old serpent in the garden of Eden posed as a theologian. 
All he wanted to talk about was God. God had told our first 
parents that they might eat in that garden of E.den of every 
tree except one ; that that tree w T as the tree of the knowledge 
of good and evil, and the day they would eat thereof, they 
should surely die. Satan heard that statement and he made 
up his mind that he would go to these people at once and talk 
a little theology. He went to them in the form of a serpent 
and said: " Is it really true that God said to you that you 
shall not eat of every tree in the garden ?" Then he went 
on a little further and he said that God had lied. So you 
see he was talking religion, but it was not the religion for 
God, but the religion against God. 

2. When Job was offering sacrifice for his sons, and 
when the sons of God came up there to offer sacrifice, the 
devil appeared among the sons of God. He wants to be in 
the Church ; he wants to be in every religious gathering ; he 
wants to pose as a theologian. His first aim was for the 
throne of God — jealous of his Maker ; he wanted the throne, 
and was hurled, as Milton says, " down to the abyss below." 

3. In the lesson of this morning we are not ^surprised, 
therefore, to find that old serpent trying to have religious 
services. The first thing he does with Christ is to try to 
make Him serve the devil and make devil's bread; in the 
second place he makes Him try to turn and twist God's 
Word ; and in the third place he leads Him up into a high 
mountain and shows Him the kingdoms of the world, and 
says : " Now if you will fall down and worship me, I will 
give to you these kingdoms of the world." Satan wanted a 
prayer meeting on that mountain; he wanted a religious 
meeting there ; he wanted to have a religion in which Satan 
would be God, and Christ would be the One who prays to 
him. 

4. And this same old serpent is just as religious to-day 
as he was then. Satan does not come around to you and say,, 



FIRST SUNDAY IN LENT. 203 

" I am the very prince of hell;" he does not come around to 
you and say, "Let us not have any religion at all ;" he knows 
well enough that an immortal soul wants something more 
than a material body to hold to; he knows that the immortal 
soul wants something religious to hold to. There is no 
nation under heaven that does not have some kind of a god 
and some kind of religion, and even in the very nations where 
Christ is not known, the devil has his altars on every hand. 
There were more altars in Corinth; there were more altars 
in Athens before Christ was known there, than there have 
been since. In every nation under heaven Satan has his 
altars on all hands, but, my dear friends, when we have our 
religious services, I care not how many people there may be ; 
I care not how much singing there may be; I care not how 
many formal prayers there may be, if that religion is not 
wholly and solely Christ crucified for a dying world, 
it is that old serpent, and the sooner the people of these days, 
with so much religion everywhere and so little Christ any- 
where, learn this great lesson, the sooner they will avoid that 
old serpent. 

IV. Again, that old serpent has always been changing 
God's Word. 

1. When we go back into the garden of Eden again we 
find that God had said that Adam and Eve might eat of 
every tree except one. The first thing that Satan said was : 
" Is it true that God said you shall not eat of every tree?" 
God never said that. And when Eve explained to him that 
God did give them the privilege of eating of every tree ex- 
cept one, and if they were to eat of that they would surely die, 
then said Satan : "Ye shall not surely die ; the day that ye 
eat thereof your eyes shall be opened and ye shall know good 
from evil and ye shall be as gods." You see how he turned 
and twisted God's Word? 

2. The same is true when he came up to the land of Uz 
to tempt Job. Job was a man of God. Job knew the Word 
of God, and in order that the old serpent might mislead Job, 
he sent to him three friends — so-called friends, generally 
enemies — who turned and twisted God's Word and kept on 
turning and twisting it, until God Himself found it neces- 
sarv to come down and correct them. 



264 THE GREAT GOSPEL 

3. In the lesson of to-day he tried to turn and twist 
God's Word. In the 91. Psalm, in the 11. and 12. verses, we 
find these words : " He shall give His angels charge concern- 
ing Thee in all Thy ways, and in their hands they shall bear 
Thee up, lest at any time Thou dash Thy foot against a stone." 
The Lord Jesus Christ drove Satan back the next time with 
the Word of God. Then said Satan, "If you are going to 
use the Word of God, I will use it too." That old serpent 
knows the Bible from beginning to end. They tell us that 
the British cable can be known no difference where it is 
found, because there is a red cord running through it; and 
wherever you look through this Bible you can find that old 
serpent, for his trail runs over it. There isn't a chapter, 
there isn't a verse in this Book that the old serpent does not 
know, but when he quoted the 91st Psalm to the Lord Jesus 
Christ, he left out the very most important words : " In all 
Thy ways." When he had the Savior up on the pinnacle of 
the temple, he said : " Why don't you throw yourself down? 
The Word of God says that He shall give His angels charge 
concerning Thee, lest at any time Thou dash Thy foot against 
a stone, but he left out the words, " He shall give His angels 
charge concerning Thee in all Thy ways." Wliat Satan 
wanted was not to have God's way, but to have his own way ; 
therefore in the turning and twisting of those four little words 
was the devilish act. 

4. That is the old serpent, and that same old serpent is 
trying to turn and twist God's Word to-day. Oh, how many 
people have been trying to turn God's Word in the Lord's 
Supper! It is the old serpent and nothing but the old ser- 
pent. How many people have been trying to turn the Word 
of God in the Office of the Keys ! It is nothing but that old 
serpent. I tell you, my friends, whenever God does not know 
what to say, and how to say it, then let us give up the Bible. 
If the Omniscient God, who knows His own mind and knows 
your mind, does not know what to say and how to say it, then 
I say let us give up the Bible ; for if we are going to let that 
old serpent do the interpreting of God's Word, we will all 
be led astray. He tried it in the garden of Eden ; he tried it 
in the land of Uz; he tried it up on the pinnacle of the 
temple in Jerusalem; and is trying it this morning. Oh, 



FIRST SUNDAY IN LENT. 2b0 

how many people go out of this house and say Rev. Long said 
this or said that, and often it is a lie. Why is it a lie? Not 
because the people know it, hut because the very devil is try- 
ing to change the words that I am saying this morning. He 
is trying his very best to make you believe that you must 
understand me differently from what I am speaking. Just 
as surely as that old serpent in the garden of Eden is still 
/on earth, just so surely he does not want you to hear the truth 
and keep it, and, if possible, will turn it and twist it some 
way in your minds. 

V. Again, that old serpent has always been aiming at 
the icealxcst point. 

1. In the garden of Eden there was a man created in 
God's image, holy and righteous, by the name of Adam ; in 
that same garden there was a weak wife, called Eve. When 
Satan Avalked into that garden he did not hunt up Adam ; he 
went to the weaker vessel first, because he knew that in weak- 
ness there is a better chance to break, than there is in 
strength. I remember as a little child we used to play a 
certain game; we would hold hands and form a circle, and 
one would stand in the center and try to break through, and 
we would all run after him, and catch him, and bring him 
back; where did we used to try to break through? The 
weakest little hands. Just so Satan to-day when he comes 
to you and to me, seeks the weakest point and tries to break 
through right there, as he did down in the garden of Eden. 

2. And so he did in the land of Uz. There was Job, a 
strong man, a powerful man, a perfect man, the best man 
living in the world that day, but he was rich. The Word of 
God tells us that he had seven thousand camels ; that he had 
five hundred yoke of oxen and five hundred asses; further- 
more that he had many servants and was the greatest man in 
all the East. When God said to that old serpent, " Hast 
thou considered my servant Job?" Satan said, "Doth he 
fear God for naught?" In other words, he said, " If you 
take away from Job all his wealth, he will curse Thee." God 
said, " Try him. Try him." One day a messenger came 
running to Job and said that they were plowing out in yon- 
der field, when the Sabeans fell upon them and took the oxen, 
and took all the asses, and killed the servants, and I only am 



266 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

left to tell thee. Another servant came and said that the 
sheep and all the cattle had been destroyed, and the servants 
were killed, and that the Chaldeans came in three bands ami 
took them, and I only am left to tell thee. While they were 
talking, another servant came running and said that the 
tires fell from heaven, and your home is destroyed, and your 
boys are killed, and I only am left to tell thee. Satan was 
striking at the weakest point. He thought that if he could 
rob that man of his wealth, he would curse God. But no, Job 
said, " I was naked when I was born, and naked I shall go 
out of the world. The Lord has given and the Lord hath 
taken; blessed be the name of the Lord." Satan tried the 
second time. " Oh," says Satan the second time, " let me 
strike at his flesh ; let me strike at his bones ; let me strike at 
his life, and I will make him curse Thee." God said, " You 
may strike at his flesh and at his bones, but save his life, — 
you cannot take his life." He tried again, Job was covered 
with boils from the top of his head to the soles of his feet, 
and he took a potsherd and scraped himself as he sat down 
in the dust; he suffered and suffered and suffered, but he 
remained firm. His own w T ife went up to him and said, 
" Curse God and die." Satan knew he could not bring that 
man to curse God himself, but he struck at the weaker point, 
— got his own wife to try to help ruin him. 

3. And so he did in the days of Jesus Christ. Jesus 
Christ was up in the mountain fasting for forty days and 
forty nights, and He was hungry ; there was nothing Jesus 
wanted so much after the fast as bread. " Now," said Satan, 
"I will strike at His weakest point ; I will go to Him and say : 
Turn these stones and rocks into bread, and He will be so 
hungry that without a moment's thought He will say, ' Be 
bread ' and He will eat." It was the weakest point, but Jesus 
Christ did not let him break through the weakest point, but- 
withstood him with the Word of God, by saying : " Man 
shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that pro- 
ceedeth out of the mouth of God." 

4. And that same old serpent has been around in your 
home, and in my home; that same old serpent positively 
knows that every man and every woman has a weak point 
somewhere ; and that old serpent knows that that weak point 



FIRST SUNDAY IN LENT. 267 

is the place to strike. There are some people who have a 
weakness of sleeping, and so the moment they come to 
Church, the devil puts them to sleep. Look around and see 
if you can find one. There are some men who have the weak- 
ness of a bad temper, and Satan holds up a provocation to 
them and tries his best to make them curse and swear and. 
damn. There are people who are born with a craving for 
strong drink. Satan knows that there is the weak point, and 
he takes the man and leads him past the saloon — not past, 
but into it — and strikes him at the weakest point and he 
falls. Others are born — born of fathers and grandfathers, 
of mothers and grandmothers who lived in the sin of adultery 
and are full of lust. God hands them over and says, " Sa- 
tan, try them," and Satan tries them, and strikes at lust, and 
breaks their character. My friends, we must know these 
things or we will never be able to know that old serpent and 
how to meet him. 

VI. It may open your eyes when I tell you this morning 
that he not only aims at the weakest point, but he always 
aims to kill. 

1. God had said to Adam : " The day thou eatest there- 
of, thou shalt surely die." Why did not Satan try tempting 
xldam and Eve in some other way? Because that was the 
only verbal commandment that was given at that time, and 
he knew very well that if he could get Adam and Eve to eat 
the forbidden fruit, that they would have to die spiritually; 
consequently he tempted them with the temptation that 
brought them down to spiritual death. 

2. What w^as he trying to do with Job? Why did he 
cover his body with boils? In order that he might poison 
every drop of his blood and bring him down to death. 

3. ' I have been reading a great many commentaries and 
even some sermons on this temptation of Christ, but I partly 
disagree with every commentator that I have ever seen on 
the meaning of the temptation on the pinnacle of the temple. 
They all tell us that was a temptation to pride ; that it was 
simply a temptation to make the Lord Jesus Christ fly out 
over the city of Jerusalem under the command of the devil, 
and thereby to fall, as Satan fell, through pride. There may 
be some truth in that explanation, but I understand it quite- 



268 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

differently. I understand that that same old serpent that 
wanted to kill Adam and Eve, that same old serpent that 
wanted to kill Job, that same old serpent tried in the very 
beginning of the Savior's ministry to take Him up on the 
pinnacle of the temple, get Him to believe that He could throw 
Himself down and fly over the city, but to leave out " the 
ways of God/' and therefore let Him go dashing down on the 
rocks and commit suicide. In other words, I believe that 
Satan wanted to kill Jesus at the beginning of His ministry 
instead of at the end of His ministry. 

4. And if you will understand that that same old ser- 
pent is striking at your weakness for the very identical pur- 
pose of bringing you down into your grave, it seems to me 
you will waken up ; it seems to me you will begin to realize 
that the very weakest point you have is the one that must be 
guarded and cemented by a power that will make you strong. 
We are told by some people that if you take a board, and split 
it, and then glue it together, that that board can be split any- 
where else quicker than where it was glued. I have seen char- 
acters that have been so weak that they have broken, and 
then, calling on God and asking His help, acknowledging 
their weakness, God sealed them together, and held them 
together, and to-day their strongest point is where they once 
were the weakest ; and I come to you this morning, you who 
have a weakness of any kind, and ask you to give up trying 
to help yourself, and urge you to trust alone in the Lord 
Jesus Christ; acknowledge that you cannot help yourself 
any longer, and ask Him to seal you together in your weak- 
ness, and hold you with His almighty power, and ask Him 
to lead you day by day, not into temptation. 

VII. That same old serpent can ahvays be crushed by 
the sharp Word of God. 

1. After Adam and Eve had been tempted, God appeared 
in the garden of Eden, and gave the sentence to Adam and 
gave the sentence to Eve, but did not overlook the old ser- 
pent. In the 15th verse of the 3rd chapter of Genesis we find 
these words : "And I will put enmity between thee and the 
woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise 
thy head and thou shalt bruise His heel." In other words, 
Satan was crushed right then and there by the promise of a 



FIRST SUNDAY IN LENT. 269' 

Savior that should crush his head. What was it that crushed 
him? The Word of God. 

2. Job, after having been tempted and falsely advised by 
his three friends, at last heard the voice of God, and God not 
only speaks from heaven to Job, but turns to the three ser- 
vants of the devil and crushes them as false advisors, with 
whom He was greatly displeased. 

3. In the lesson of to-day we discover that the weapon 
which Jesus Christ used constantly was the Word of God, 
which, in another place in the Scriptures, is called "the 
sword of the Spirit." At every temptation Satan was thrust 
back by a passage of Scripture. In the first temptation, 
where Jesus said, " Man shall not live by bread alone.," He 
quoted from the 8th chapter of Deuteronomy; the second 
temptation, where Jesus said : " Thou shalt not tempt the 
Lord thy God," he quoted from the 6th chapter of Deuter- 
onomy ; then the third temptation came, and Jesus took His 
sharp sword and said, " Get thee hence, Satan, for it is writ- 
ten: Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and Him only 
shalt thou serve." Then the devil leaveth Him. When? 
Not when he heard the Word of God, for he heard it in the 
first temptation ; not when he heard it again, for he heard it 
in the second temptation; not until he heard that sharp 
Word, " Get thee behind me, Satan," did he leave Christ. 

4. There, my friends, you see the difference between the 
Word of God and the Word of God. That explains why it 
is that so many preach, and preach, and preach, and yet 
no one is converted; that explains why some people may 
have the Word of God in their homes all their lives, and yet 
they are not growing in grace ; that is the reason some people 
at times feel hurt under some ministry and not under others. 
A man may preach the Truth and never save a soul. We 
learn from this temptation of our Savior, that not only must 
the Word of God be spoken, but it must be spoken sharply. 
Satan left, and what is the result of a sharp ministry? Some 
people will leave. The sooner, however, the Church of God 
will learn this great lesson that if a man will not give up the 
old serpent he had better leave, the sooner we shall conquer 
as a Christian Church. God knows I love every man on 
earth. I love every immortal soul. I do not know the person 



2<0 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

in God's world that I do not love, and I love to see every one 
a Christian. It is that for which I am laboring; it is that 
for which I am praying, but if I knew there were twenty 
members in this Church this morning, living in sin and who 
arc bound to continue in sin, and feel hurt every time they 
hear God's Truth preached, I would take this sword of the 
Spirit and hammer on those members until they ivould re- 
pent or go out! 

It takes the sharp Word of God to build np the Church, 
by driving the devils out, and every man who will hold to 
the old serpent. Just as soon, however, as the devil left, 
angels came and ministered unto Him, and just as soon as 
the devil left, the people of God flocked around the Savior; 
and if you want to know it, there is nothing in the world that 
will draw people into the house of God like downright, honest, 
sharp preaching. It may hurt to have this sword put into 
the soul ; it may hurt for a moment to have the truth told, 
that arouses the conscience, but when you go home and medi- 
tate, and think, and think, and think, it will not be long 
until God will show you that after all, that is what you need ; 
that after all, that is the truth that the soul wants to hold 
fast to. I am not caring half as much for friendship here 
on earth, as that I want it at the judgment bar of God — there 
is where I want your friendship. I do not want you to stand 
before me on that day and say, "You failed to warn me; 
you failed to tell me the truth ; you failed to picture that old 
serpent, and here we are." 

Angels came and ministered unto Him. Christ hungry, 
and no bread, because He did not listen to the devil? Is that 
so? Not devil's bread, but because He was true He ate 
angels' bread. And so I come to all of you this morning with 
this great truth : Be firm for the truth. Hold fast to the 
literal Word of God if the heavens fall, and let the world say 
what it will, and let the bread go away from you if it will, 
}'A the bread go away from you that is trying to be furnished 
by the devil, but do not forget that before God would see His 
children starve, He would say to His angels : " Fly, fly and 
l)ring them bread, for My children are hungry." Amen. 



FIRST SUNDAY IN LENT. 271 



PRAYER. 

O God, our Heavenly Father, we thank Thee for Thy blessed Truth, 
and for Thy Word, which is such a power, and which as the sword of the 
Spirit severeth and pierceth the very marrow and bone ; and we pray Thee, 
O God, that Thy searching Word may win every soul in this house, or that 
ever shall come into this house, win them for Thee forever. We pray Thee 
that Thou wilt fill us with Thy Holy Word, that we may be enabled in every 
hour of temptation to meet Satan with that strong sword that was in the 
hands of our Savior, Jesus Christ. We pray Thee that Thou wilt help us to 
make diligent use of the means of grace. Help us by Thine own eye to 
search into our own weakness and to have it made strong in Thine Almighty 
hands. We pray Thee to go with us to our respective homes, and may the 
Truth that we have heard be carried through us as vessels to those who have 
not come to Thy house ; and may this Truth go on from tongue to ear, and 
from ear to heart, and from heart to tongue, and again to ear, and again to 
heart, and again to others, until souls by hundreds and thousands shall be 
won for Thy kingdom; and in the journey of life may we be happy in the 
prayer of our souls, which lifts its voice in Thine own words : 

Our Father, who art in heaven ; Hallowed be Thy name ; Thy kingdom 
come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven ; Give us this day our 
daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass 
against us; and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil ; for Thine 
is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever and ever. Amen. 






SECOND SUNDAY IN LENT, 



A BEAUTIFUL BATTLE. 



Matt. 15 21-28. 



^^^HEN Jesus went hence, and departed into the coasts of Tyre and 
Sidon. And behold, a woman of Canaan came out of the same 
coasts, and cried unto Him, saying : 'Have mercy on me, O Lord, 
Thou Son of David ; my daughter is grievously vexed with a devil.' But He 
answered her not a word. And His disciples came and besought Him, say- 
ing : 'Send her away for she crieth after us.' But He answered and said: 
'I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel.' Then came 
she and worshipped Him, saying: 'Lord, help me.' But He answreed and 
said : 'It is not meet to take the children's bread and cast it to the dogs.' 
And she said : 'Truth, Lord : yet the dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from 
their masters' table.' Then Jesus answered and said unto her : 'Oh, woman, 
great is thy faith : be it unto thee even as thou wilt' And her daughter was 
made whole from that very hour." 

Sanctify us, O Lord, through Thy Truth; 
Thy Word is Truth. Amen. 



Beloved in Christ : — 

In our worship we are taking a journey to Calvary's hill, 
to see the sufferings and the redemption of our Lord and 
Savior Jesus Christ. This was a great and, I might call it a 
horrible battle for the salvation of the world. We heard 
last Sunday how our Savior was forty days and forty nights 
in the desert, led by the Holy Spirit, in order that He might 
be tempted by the devil, and with His sharp Word overcome 
him. In the lesson of to-day we have not the horrible battle 
of the Savior, but rather the beautiful battle of a great faith. 
- — A battle in which we find not the Savior overcoming, but 
overcome; a lesson in which we find Him, being overcome 
by faith and prayer, overcoming the same old serpent again. 
I want to call your attention then this morning to 

272 



SECOND SUNDAY IN LENT. 273 

A BEAUTIFUL BATTLE. 
May the Holy Spirit help us this morning to notice 



1. 


The 


soldier. 


II. 


The 


situation. 


III. 


The 


secret. 


IV. 


The 


service. 


I. 


Look at the soldier 



We find that the soldier in this 
beautiful battle is not a man, but a woman; not some young 
girl, but a mother; not a Christian, but a heathen. 

1. She knows what it means to live in a country where 
there is no church; she knows what it means to live in a 
home where there is no Christian father; where the head of 
the family is not the Lord God, but Satan. 

2. She is not only a heathen, but I may say she is also 
(/ woman. Some of the best soldiers in the history of the 
world have been — not men — but women. When we talk 
about a soldier we generally think of some great general; 
some man in the navy, or some man in the army; but the 
greatest battles that have ever been fought, have been fought 
in kitchens and homes, and especially when coming from a 
heathen home to a Christian home, by women. Perpetua, 
as she stood with her child in her arms, twenty-two years of 
age, fighting at Carthage with the wild animals, showed 
a heroism that has seldom been found in man. 

3. This soldier of whom I speak to-day, was not only a 
heathen, and a woman, she also was a mother. She had a 
daughter at home grievously vexed of the devil; she knew 
what it meant to have a child, and that child not in the king- 
dom of heaven; she had a mother's heart in her. I know of 
no more beautiful picture of a mother's heart than of that 
woman who not long ago went to one of the prisons in our 
own State and begged that she might have the body of her 
criminal son, who had been executed and laid to rest in the 
criminal cemetery. They refused to give up the body. 
"Well," said she, "will you let me, when I am dead, sleep 
by the side of him?" There yon have a picture of a mother's 
heart. Rather would she sleep by the side of her criminal 
boy, in a criminal cemetery, than to be away from him. This 



274 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

woman of whom we speak in our lesson to-day, was called 
by Mark a Greek, a Syrophenician, a heathen, and yet this 
heathen woman, a mother, proves herself to be a great soldier. 
II. Let me call your attention to the situation. What 
was the situation in that home near Tyre and Sidon? 

1. In the first place we find that Satan had taken pos- 
session of that home. That same old serpent that tried to 
ruin Adam and Eve, and thereby the whole human race ; that 
same old serpent that was walking to and fro and up and 
down on the earth, that struck Job with boils until his own 
wife tried to persuade him to curse God; that same old 
serpent that tried to overcome the Master in the great temp- 
tation ; that same old serpent was down in the home of this 
soldier, possessing her dear, sweet daughter, vexing her, giv- 
ing her already a foretaste of hell. This woman was not 
afraid to call things by their right names. She said, " My 
daughter is grievously vexed with a devil." 

2. While it was true that Satan was possessing her 
home, and making it miserable for the daughter, and for her, 
and for all concerned, it was also true that just as Jesus 
Christ had gone up into the mountain, away from the public, 
so at this time He had gone out of the Holy Land and was 
in the heathen land near this home, and there was an oppor- 
tunity for her that she might never have again. " Jesus 
Christ, the Savior of the world, is near my home," said she, 
" and now, if ever, I feel my responsibility." 

3. That this woman felt her own responsibility deeply 
and keenly, we learn from the words that she uttered when 
she found the Savior. " Have mercy on me, O Lord, Thou 
Son of David, my daughter is grievously vexed with a devil," 
and when, afterwards, the disciples wanted to drive her back, 
she fell down before the Savior and said — not " help my 
daughter " — but " help me." What kind of help did that 
mother need? She had no devil in her, but she had a daugh- 
ter that was possessed with a devil, and she felt in her own 
heart that that child was her child, and that it might be on 
account of her own sins that her daughter was that day suf- 
fering the vexation of the devil. In other words, that mother 
felt what every mother in this house ought to feel this morn- 
ing, and what every man in this house ought to feel this 
morning, and that is, your child going to hell makes you re- 




SECOND SUNDAY IN LENT. I i O 

sponsible, and you cannot get away from that responsibility. 
If there is any one thing- that the Church of God ought to 
learn to-day, that it does not know, it is the responsibility 
of parents. If parents would feel this responsibility as this 
woman felt it, as God wants us to feel it, we would not let 
our children have their own way, unless their way is God's 
way. The situation then, in plain words, was this: The 
devil was the head of her home; Christ was not far away. 
Now is the opportunity to get help, or never. " Lord, help 
me!" 

III. Having found the soldier and the situation, let me 
call your attention to the secret. There was a great secret 
in that woman's heart that day, — a secret that some people 
have never yet possessed. May God help you to find it this 
morning! The whole secret of this woman's great work on 
that day, lay in these words : " Oh, woman, great is thy 
faith." We learn in our catechism that faith consists of 
three elements: knowledge, assent, and confidence. These 
three words are taken right out of God's Holy Word. Listen : 
" How shall they call on Him of whom they have not heard?" 
— Knowledge. Romans 10. Listen : "He that believeth 
not the Son shall not see life." — Assent. John 3 : 36. Lis- 
ten : " Faith is the substance of things hoped for and the 
evidence of things not seen." — Confidence. Hebrews 11 : 1. 
This woman not only had faith based on knowledge, assent 
and confidence, but she had a faith that was based on great 
knowledge, and great assent, and great confidence. 

1. I say she had great knowledge. I do not mean to 
say that she knew any more than you do ; I do not mean to 
say that she knew as much as some of you do, but I do mean 
to say that under the circumstances, that heathen woman had 
settled two or three things that some people in the present 
day, who want to be much enlightened, have not settled. She 
settled in her heart once and forever that she was sick and 
tired of the ruling of the devil ; that she was sick and tired 
of having Satan the head of her family; that she was sick 
and tired of being a heathen ; that she was sick and tired of 
living outside of the kingdom of God. She had a taste of 
hell in the vexation of her daughter. The reason some of 
you do not appreciate the Church of God is because you have 
never been a heathen ; because you have never been in a hea- 



276 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

then home; you have been raised with Christian influences 
around you; you have had God's blessings all around you, 
and therefore you do not know from what Christ the Re- 
deemer had redeemed you, and to what He has tried to save 
you. The best reply that was ever given to Robert G. Inger- 
soll was not a book, nor a lecture, but just one sentence. 
Hastings said to Colonel Ingersoll, "If you do not believe in 
Christianity, go to a heathen land where they will eat you 
for breakfast." There you have got the answer to infidelity. 
If you do not believe in Christianity, go to a land where there 
is no Bible ; go to a land where there is no prayer ; go to a 
land where there is no God ; go to a land where there is no 
Christianity, and they will eat you for breakfast ; — try that 
for a while. 

This woman not only had the knowledge of a sinful, lost 
life, but she also had the knowledge that Jesus Christ was the 
real Savior of the world. You will remember that Tyre and 
Sidon were northwest of the Holy Land, or along its border, 
and the very place where Elijah spent much of his time with 
the widow of Zarephath, and you will remember that he did 
not fail to let those people know that a Savior was coming. 
You will furthermore remember that people came from the 
region of Tyre and Sidon to see the wonderful w T orks of 
Christ, and when they went home they told this woman, or 
she would not have known what she knew. In other words, 
she had knowledge concerning the Savior Jesus Christ ; she 
knew He was God, for none but God could do the things He 
was doing in that Holy Land; none but God could give sight 
to the blind; none but God could give hearing to the deaf; 
none but God could raise the dead; none but God could do 
all the wonderful works that He did, and she heard about 
those things. 

She not only heard that He was actually God, but she 
knew that He was the promised Messiah. Her very prayer 
indicated that she knew He was man as well as God, for her 
prayer was : "Have mercy on me, O Lord, Thou Son of Da- 
vid" — the promised Messiah — "Have mercy for my daugh- 
ter is grievously vexed with a devil." When man knows his 
sin, when man knows the awful effects of Satan in the home 
and in the heart, when man knows that Jesus Christ is the 



SECOND SUNDAY IN LENT. 2<< 

promised Savior, and is near, that man has laid the founda- 
tion of a great faith. 

2. Not only did she have a great knowledge, she also had 
great assent. 

In her assent we see that she never disputes with God and 
always agrees with him. The Savior said some very hard 
things to this woman, but do you find that she ever disputes 
with Him? Not a word. There is one of the first marks of 
assent. When God sjjeaks the believer says, " I will not 
contradict it; God has spoken." When He said to her that 
He was-sent only to the lost sheep of Israel, she did not dis- 
pute with Him. When the disciples tried to drive her back, 
she did not enter into an argument. When the Savior said it 
was not meet to take the children's bread and give it to the 
dogs, she did not stand up and argue that she was no dog. 
She never disputed one word with God. That was assent. 

Furthermore, she not only did not dispute with Him, but 
she actually agreed with everything that God said. When 
God said that it was not meet to take the bread from the 
children and give it to the dogs, she said, " Truth, Lord." 
No difference what God said, she says, " That is true; Thou 
canst not get me to dispute with Thee. I believe that what 
Thou hast said it true," and there is the second step in faith. 
Oh! you quibblers with God's Word, you have not yet laid 
the foundation for your faith. You people who are not sat- 
isfied with God's Word as He has spoken it, learn this morn- 
ing from this heathen woman, how to believe in God. 

3. Furthermore, I say she also had confidence. She 
started out from that home of hers with two things settled : 
one is, this Savior can help; and the other is that He will 
help. She did not run to Him and say : Lord God, I have a 
daughter vexed with the devil ; is it possible for Thee to help? 
She did not run to Him and say : Lord, even if Thou canst 
help, wilt Thou do it? No! Lord, I know that Thou canst 
help and I know that Thou wilt help. Help me! Not for a 
moment did she doubt that there was going to be help for her 
daughter that day. There you have the secret. 

IV. Finally, let me lead you up to this soldier's service. 
I call your attention to the fact that in this service nothing 
could keep her at home. 



278 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

Sickness could not keep her at home. If that had been 
you or I, and we had a daughter at home grievously vexed of 
the devil, we should have said : We cannot leave home to-day 
at any price ; we should have said that that daughter needs 
my attention now. But, my friends, this soldier had faith 
in God, and, no difference if the daughter is lying there pos- 
sessed of the devil, and vexed, in agony and pain, she realized 
that her staying there could never help her daughter, and so 
she went from home — a leap for liberty — a dash for 
peace — a cry for help. 

Even Satan himself could not hold her there. When you 
hold my daughter, you generally hold me, and when Satan 
took possession of that woman's daughter, he took possession 
of her mother's heart and tried to hold her. She did not fail 
to realize that the heart of the daughter was her own heart. 
Your child vexed of the devil vexes you. Consequently, she 
says that " even Satan cannot hold me here ; I am going away 
from home to-day," and she went. 

Even the secrecy of the Savior could not hold her there. 
I read to you this morning the lesson in Mark as well as in 
Matthew, in order to bring out all the points. Matthew 
tells us that Jesus Christ went up near Tyre and Sidon for the 
very purpose that He might hide in a home where the peojjle 
might not find Him; and yet, though He was. hiding, though 
He was trying to get away from the masses and the multi- 
tude for a short rest, this woman says, "I am going to find 
Him; nothing can keep me back; I shall find Him even in 
that home yonder; I am going." Nothing could keep her 
at home. That was the kind of service that soldier rendered 
that day; but she even went further than that in her service; 
she allowed nothing to make her retreat. 

2. Nothing could make her retreat. Oh, what a beauti- 
ful battle. She started out a volunteer from home ; she goes 
into the battle to get help for her daughter, — every inch an 
obstacle, yet nothing can drive her home. Not even God's 
silence. When she finally found the Savior and said, "Lord, 
have mercy on me ; my daughter is grievously vexed with a 
devil," Jesus paid no attention to her. That looks as if the 
Savior were very unkind, but the Savior had been preaching 
around the Holv Land for vears and He had seen so little 



SECOND SUNDAY IN LENT. 279 

faith, and now, for once, He saw a flower in the desert; He 
saw a beautiful blooming flower under the snow; He saw an 
unusual faith out in this heathen land, and lie made up His 
mind that the way to develop power is to try it; the way to 
develop a soldier is to put him into the battle, and so He 
comes and simply throws His silence into the presence of that 
woman, in order that she may be tested, and, if possible, 
driven back, knowing that she could not be; and there she 
stood and held her ground. Even God's silence could not 
drive her back. 

Nor could God's disciples do it. Those disciples who 
were with Jesus came to Him and prayed Him that He 
would drive this woman away, drive her back. I never can 
read this chapter, and this special verse, without thinking 
of how our own brethren, the Christian people, will drive 
us down and back; if they possibly can, instead of lifting us 
up. Eleven or twelve good men, men of God, preachers of 
the Gospel, and they threw their force against this woman. 
They would have driven her away from the Savior if they 
could ; but she is a soldier ; she has a faith ; she pays no at- 
tention to these men ; those men say, " She crieth after us." 
The great truth was she had not paid any attention to them 
at all. Some people are foolish enough to think that the 
people are running after them. I would be a fool if I thought 
this morning that you were in this house to run after me. 
Little do some of you care about me, but there is one thing 
you do love, and thank God for that, — you love the truth I 
am preaching, and you cannot get away from that. Little 
did it make any difference whether she was running after 
those twelve men or not; she paid no attention to them; 
they tried to drive her back, Hbut she is a soldier, and she 
stands, and she does not give one inch. She has a secret in 
her heart, and that secret is that she is going to get help for 
her daughter, and going to reach Christ, and all the men in 
the world cannot keep her back 

Even God's own severe test cannot keep her back. When 
the men had failed, Jesus spoke up and said, "The Son of 
man is not sent but unto the lost sheep of Israel." That 
was enough to drive her home; that would have driven 
you or me back. This woman did not belong to Israel; 



280 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

this woman was not a child of Jacob of old; she was a 
heathen woman, but it made no difference to her whether 
she was a child of God or not; it made no difference to 
her whether she was born in Israel or not ; the truth of it is, 
says she, " To-day I am not in the Holy Land, but you are 
in my land. Help me," and God Himself could not drive her 
back. It is said of Archimedes, the great mathematician, 
who was born in the year 287 B. C, that he was so engrossed 
in mathematics that he said, " If I could find a fulcrum I 
could move the world," and people thought he was crazy; 
but Elijah, who lived in the very country where this woman 
was, with prayer moved heaven, and this woman, though a 
heathen, with faith in her heart, has conquered Jesus, held 
Him back. A soldier in a beautiful battle. He gave her 
another test. When she fell down, without a single promise, 
crying for help, He saw that beautiful flflwer was about to 
bloom, and He gave it the severest test it could receive. He 
said, " It is not meet that we should take the bread from the 
children and cast it to dogs — go back, you dog — YOU 
HEATHEN DOG! What right have you to come to me?" 
Oh, it was a hard test. At first it looks as if God's heart 
were hardened ; but no, He was showing to the world a faith 
that would stand, and He gave it the hardest blow He could 
give it ; but the woman made a " yes " out of a "no," and a 
" no " out of a " yes." I am sorry that the English Bible 
is not able to translate the Greek in some instances as well as 
the German does. Old Doctor Luther knew how to make the 
Greek Bible talk German, and in this very sentence where 
she says : " Nevertheless the little dogs eat of the crumbs 
that fall under the master's table," the German Bible says : 
" doch essen die Huendlein ton den Brosamlein." If you 
understand that you will find a beauty in that answer that 
you cannot find in the English. The original does not 
say dogs, but little doggies; not crumbs, but little bits of 
crumbs. So the Savior said, "It is not meet to take the 
children's bread and cast it to the little doggies." And so 
she thought, " Now I have a hope that I could not have had 
before. I will not call Thee Father, for the man is not the 
father of the brute, and if a master has a dog he may kick 
him out in the streets and make him hunt his bread, but 



SECOND SUNDAY IN LENT. 2S1 

surely his little children have enough love for a little doggie, 
that if they can have the little doggie in the room, that little 
doggie may at least eat a little crumb that falls under the 
table. And now, Lord and master," says this soldier in this 
beautiful battle, " I am perfectly willing here in my land 
not to call Thee Father to-day, but I will call Thee Master ; 
but I will call Thy attention to the fact that I will be a 
doggie and all I want is the privilege to get under Thy table ; 
I do not ask Thee to rob Israel of her bread ; I do not ask for 
the privilege of sitting down at the table of Israel, but all I 
do ask is this, O my God and Master, I have a daughter at 
home grievously vexed of a devil, and just a few days ago 
Thou didst drive devils away with the power of Thy Word, 
and all I want is to get under Thy table like a little doggie 
and hunt up the little crumbs, and then, O my God, my daugh- 
ter will be well, and I will be well, and the victory will be 
mine," and she conquered Christ — she won the victory, and 
at that moment all the obstacles in the way parted, and hea- 
ven parted, and the doors flew open, and the throne of God 
was offered to her and to her child, when Jesus said, "As 
thou wilt, so be it unto thee," and her daughter was made 
whole in that selfsame hour. What a glorius victory for 
this soldier, this heathen soldier! 

May God help us to-day to have something, at least, of 
this great faith in these days of trial and affliction. 

In conclusion, I wonder how you feel now that you have 
heard the story of this Syrophenician woman. It makes me 
feel ashamed of myself. How do you feel, this morning? 
Was that the only home that had the devil in it? How about 
your own home ; how about those in your own home that are 
not children of God? Who owns them; whose are they? 
Do not listen to this story this morning as one of two thou- 
sand years ago, as one beyond the waters. That same old 
serpent is in Mansfield; that same old serpent would like 
to have you, and will have you, if Christ does not. What are 
you doing for that one in your home possessed of the devil? 
What are you doing? Sitting around home with him, or 
with her? What are you doing, are you fighting the beauti- 
ful battle that this Syrophenician woman fought? Are you 
starting for Jesus with a determination not to come back 



282 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

until that one is healed? Are you ready to overcome every 
obstacle? Are you ready to throw yourself down at the 
feet of Jesus and say, " Walk over me, or help me?" 

Next Friday evening an opportunity is given again to 
bring in more men and women, and children, into the king- 
dom of God. Church Council, how many have you brought 
in the last ten years to the Savior? Fathers and mothers in 
this large congregation, how many times have you made an 
effort to have your homes delivered from the power of hell? 
Oh yes, children of God, look around you, and start out with 
a faith like that of the Syrophenieian woman and bring sal- 
vation to every home, is my prayer. There is no reason why 
there should not be one hundred instead of thirty or forty 
added to this congregation and to the kingdom of God at our 
next communion. May God help us this morning to do some- 
thing, and not simply learn what God w T ants us to do and not 
carry out that will. Blessed are those that hear the Word of 
God and keep it. These are the words of the Lord and Savior,, 
Jesus Christ. 

"O for a faith that will not shrink, 
Though pressed by every foe, 
That will not tremble on the brink 
Of any earthly woe ! 

That will not murmur nor complain 

Beneath the chast'ning rod, 
But, in the hour of grief and pain, 

Will lean upon its God ; 

A faith that shines more bright and clear 

When tempests rage without ; 
That, when in danger, knows no fear, 

In darkness feels no doubt ; 

That bears, unmoved, the world's dread frown, 

Nor heeds its scornful smile; 
That seas of trouble cannot drown, 

Nor Satan's arts beguile; 

A faith that keeps the narrow way 

Till life's last hour is fled, 
And with a pure and heavenly ray 

Lights up a dying bed. 



SECOND SUNDAY IX LENT. 283 

Lord, give us such a faith as this, 

And then, what'er may conic, 
We'll taste, e'en here, the hallowed bliss 

Of an eternal home." Amen. 

PRAYER. 

O God, Our Heaenly Father, we thank Thee for those beautiful flowers 
of the desert; we thank Thee for a faith that puts Christianity to shame; we 
thank Thee for a faith that puts men to shame ; we thank Thee for deliver- 
ance from possession of the devil by the power of Thy grace ; and now we 
pray Thee, O God, this day that Thou wilt look around in our homes, and 
wherever Thou dost find that they are in possession of Satan, that Thou wilt 
deliver with the power of Thy Word. O God, convince us with Thy Holy 
Spirit, of sin, righteousness and judgment, and especially of the sin that we 
do not believe in Thee. O Lord, help us to realize that unbelief is the dam- 
ning sin, and that all other sins are bred and born by this one. We pray 
Thee that Thou wilt plant Thy Word in our hearts to-day and there make it 
grow until it shall compel us in Thy name, to bring souls to Christ. All 
these favors we ask in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and the 
Holy Spirit. Amen. 



THIRD SUNDAY IN LENT. 



DUMB DEVILS. 



Luke 11 : 14-28. 



H 



It \ ^TO He was casting out a. devil, and it was dumb. And it came to 

pass, when the devil was gone out, the dumb spake; and the people 
wondered. But some of them said, He casteth out devils through 
Beelzebub the chief of the devils. And others, tempting Him, sought of Him 
a sign from heaven. But He, knowing their thoughts, said unto them, 'Every 
kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation ; and a house divided 
against a house falleth. If Satan also be divided against himself, how shall 
his kingdom stand? because ye say that I cast out devils through Beelzebub. 
And if I by Beelzebub cast out devils, by whom do your sons cast them 
out? therefore shall they be your judges. B'ut if I with the ringer of God 
cast out devils, no doubt the kingdom of God is come upon you. When a 
strong man armeth keepeth his palace, his goods are in peace : but when a 
stronger than he shall come upon him, and overcome him, he taketh from 
him all his armour wherein he trusted, and divideth his spoils. He that is 
not with Me is against Me; and he that gathereth not with Me scattereth. 
When the unclean spirit is gone out of a man, he walketh through dry 
places, seeking rest; and finding none, he saith, I will return unto my house 
whence I came out. And when he cometh, he findeth it swept and garnished. 
Then goeth he, and taketh to him seven other spirits more wicked than him- 
self ; and they enter in, and dwell there : and the last state of that man is 
worse than the first.' And it came to pass as He spake these things, a certain 
woman of the company lifted up her voice, and said unto Him, 'Blessed is 
the womb that bare Thee, and the paps which Thou hast sucked.' But He 
said, 'Yea, rather, blessed are they that hear the Word of God, and keep it.' " 

Sanctify us, O Lord, through Thy Truth; 
Thy Word is Truth. Amen. 



Beloved in Christ : 

In this morning's lesson we have the sufferings of the 
Lord Jesus Christ in His sympathy for poor man, possessed 
of the devil. The war is on. Christ is going to Calvary. 
Satan against the Savior. Satan's kingdom against the 

284 



THIRD SUNDAY IN LENT. 285 

Savior's kingdom. Ignorance against Omniscience. Such 
is the battle on the way to the cross. Let me call your atten- 
tion this morning, without further introduction, to the fact 
that though the devils are wise, nevertheless their actions 
are dumb. 

DUMB DEVILS. 

"And He was casting out a devil, and it was dumb. And 
it came to pass, when the devil was gone out, the dumb 
spake; and the people wondered." 

When we say in the first two lines of this text, "And He 
was casting out a devil and it was dumb/' it was not the 
man or the woman that was dumb, it was the devil himself 
that was dumb. So you see the Lord Jesus Christ declares 
that there are dumb devils. I call your attention to these 
great truths : 

I. The devils have made themselves dumb, 
II. They have made their children dumb. 

1. The devils have made themselves dumb, first of all, 
because they committed a great crime that would not even 
permit them in the future to die. If the angels in heaven 
that grew proud that morning and tried to occupy the throne 
of their God, could have rebelled, and at the same time 
reached a period in the history of the world when they 
could have lain down and died, it would not have been so 
dumb ; but for immortal beings, holy angels, wise, powerful, 
enjoying all the blessings of the throne of heaven, to com- 
mit the crime that they did, of rebellion, and then not be 
able to die, but remain immortal rebels, is evidence that 
they were dumb devils. 

2. Not only were they dumb devils because they could 
not die, but because they could not remain in heaven. That 
young man who is raised as an orphan in a good family, 
receiving every parental care from the father, and every 
maternal care from the mother, treated as a child, with all 
the blessings of a beautiful home, when that young man 
so acts that he must leave that home and knows not where to 
go, that young man is a dumb young man. Yet, my friends, 
such was the action of these dumb devils. They occupied 



286 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

a home with their Father in heaven; they enjoyed all the 
blessings of the morning stars that sang together; there 
was not a benediction that God did not bestow upon them, 
but they so acted that they had to leave heaven, or, as Mil- 
ton says in that great Paradise Lost : 

"Him the Almighty Power 
Hurled headlong flaming from the ethereal sky, 
With hideous ruin and combustion, down 
To bottomless perdition, there to dwell 
In adamantine chains and penal fire, 
Who durst defy the Omnipotent to arms." 

The very fact that these devils could not remain in heaven 
shows that their action was dumb. 

3. Then, again, when they came here on earth and 
possessed man, it was another dumb ac^. The fallen angel 
of God, in the form of a serpent, went into the garden of 
Eden; he had no rest anywhere, so he tried to bring sin 
into the world, and, by bringing sin into the world, he tried 
to make man his habitation, take possession of him, of Adam 
and Eve. They therefore gave their bodies and souls over 
for Satan to dwell in them ; but what a dumb act it was on 
the part of the devils to try to live in men, where they could 
not stay! We have in our lesson this morning the picture 
of a devil that went into a person and, as Matthew and the 
other evangelists, tell us, he robbed that person of hearing, 
of seeing and of speech, and yet the time comes when Satan 
cannot stay in this person. — Christ drives him out What 
a dumb devil he was, after all. And we find that these 
dumb devils have done the same all through history. Now, 
again, the young man who would go and have a carpenter 
build him a house, with poor studding, with poor rafters, 
poor weather-boarding and a poor foundation, and after- 
wards expect to go and live in that house himself, and when 
the rains fall, and the storm begins to blow and the floods 
begin to come and lift up that house and throw it from its 
foundation, and when he cries for help, we say "the dumb 
young man" — and there you have the picture of the devils 
They came here on earth, took possession of man, and 
then planted in man the seed of death, so that this body 



TI1I11D SUNDAY IN LENT. 287 

would have to perish, and when this body does perish the 
dumb devils have to get out; so you see they are even dumb 
in that respect — they cannot stay with man. 

4. YYe see, furthermore, they are dumb devils when they 
try to stay with Jesus Christ. There never was a time when 
the devils of hell tried to carry xm their warfare stronger 
and with more power than in the days of the ministry of 
Jesus Christ and the early childhood of the Christian Church. 
Did you ever notice in reading the Bible carefully how the 
footprints of Satan and the footprints of Jesus Christ de- 
velop along parallel lines? If you were to read only the 
first chapter of Genesis and had nothing more of the Bible 
than that, you would think that the old serpent of the garden 
of Eden was nothing but a natural snake. If you were to 
read nothing but those words in the first chapter of the Bible 
you would think that the seed of the woman promised to 
bruise the serpent's head, was nothing but a natural child. 
As we pass on down over the pages of the Bible, we come to 
a time when that serpent is no more a natural serpent, but 
appears as a son of God, when he tried to destroy Job ; and 
right there we find Christ's foot-prints becoming so plain 
that Job says : "I know that my Redeemer liveth." As we 
pass on further, and Jesus Christ becomes man at the crib 
of Bethlehem, we find that this old serpent begins to rave 
as he never did before, and just as Jesus Christ begins to 
preach and preach salvation, and to storm the battlements 
of hell, then it is that Satan and his hosts come out and 
possess men as they never did before. But we discover, my 
friends, in the lesson of this morning, that the prince of 
hell and the Prince of heaven* meet face to face, and they 
meet m the presence of one possessed of the devil, and the 
devil was dumb. And we discover that these devils were so 
dumb that they even endeavored to make the people believe 
that Jesus Christ himself was one of their number — that 
He was casting out devils by Beelzebub, the prince of devils, 
and that this Savior of the world was nothing else than a 
servant, ofter all, of their captain, Beelzebub, — but one 
word from the Savior to the tempter, "Get thee behind me, 7 ' 
and Satan had to flee; in this morning's lesson one argu- 
ment on the part of Jesus Christ, and the devil had to leave; 



288 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

he could not stay — the dumb devil — he could not stay with 
Jesus Christ; he could not stay with man; he could not 
stay in heaven, and he could not die. 

5. And these same dumb devils can find no rest, no 
difference where they go. "When the unclean spirit is gone 
out of a man, he walketh through dry places, seeking rest, 
and finding none." Seeking rest and finding none. So you 
find, my dear friends, that these dumb devils, from the time 
they rebelled against their God in heaven, to this very day, 
have never been able to find rest. No rest in man, no rest 
out of man ; no rest in war, no rest out of war ; no rest in 
the flood, no rest in the cabin ; no rest in the storm, no rest in 
peace, no rest on the plain, no rest in the desert, no rest in 
hell — wherever they go seeking rest, they find none. Dumb 
devils ! 

II. And these dumb devils, as we learn from the lesson 
of this morning, are the very ones that have made their 
children dumb — made those dumb who are bodily possessed; 
those dumb who are mentally possessed; those dumb who 
are curiously possessed; those dumb who are neutrally 
possessed; those dumb who are eternally possessed. 

1. There are some people in the world, and always have 
been, who are bodily possessed. Such a one we have in our 
morning's lesson. "And He was casting out a deviL and it 
was dumb. And it came to pass, when the devil was gone 
out, the dumb spake; and the people wondered." And the 
dumb spake. This must have been a person who could 
speak before he was possessed. No child ever learned to 
speak in a minute, and though he had been possessed from 
his infancy, could not learn to speak in a moment's time 
after the devil was gone out of him; but here we learn in 
this lesson that the person (woman or man we cannot tell) 
who could at one time speak, then was possessed of the 
devil and could not speak, and we are told by some of the 
other evangelists that not only was he dumb, but the sight 
was gone, and the hearing was gone. This dumb devil 
possessing the body of this person, robbed the person of 
hearing, robbed the person of seeing, and robbed the per- 
son of speaking; and, oh! how many people there are to- 
day who are bodily possessed of the devil. It may be they 



THIRD SUNDAY IN LENT. 289 

can hear certain sounds and see certain things, and speak 
certain languages, but how many people there are in this 
world who are considered bright and intelligent, who have 
no ears to hear the Word of God; you could hire them with- 
out any effort to go to the theater to hear some foolish play; 
they would travel for miles to hear a political speech; they 
would go anywhere to hear nonsense, but you could not 
hire them to go to the house of God to hear a message of 
the Lord Jesus Christ. Why? The dumb devils made 
them dumb — robbed them of their hearing of God's Word. 
There are people who would travel for miles to see this or 
that, but you could not get them to see spiritually. They, 
are as blind as blindness can be. Why? Because the 
dumb devils have robbed them of their sight. There are 
people who can gossip and talk from morning until night, 
but they have never used their tongues to praise God; they 
have never used their tongues to pray in Jesus' name to the 
Father in heaven; they are willing to talk all kinds of non- 
sense, but begin to talk with them about their souPs salva- 
tion, about the things that pertain to Christ and eternity 
in heaven, and they are as silent as the wall. The dumb 
devils have robbed them of their tongues. 

2. These dumb devils not only possess men bodily, but 
they also take possession mentally. I am not here to say 
that every one in the insane asylum is possessed of the 
devil, any more than I would say that every one in Mans- 
field is possessed of the devil. There are bodily sicknesses^ 
and reasons why people may lose their minds. Neverthe- 
less, the fact stands before us that all over the world the 
insane asylums are increasing and the rooms are being 
crowded, and in some of the cells they rave as only those 
could and would who are really possessed of the devil. We 
have in our text to-day Pharisees looked upon as leaders in 
Jerusalem, men who are literally possessed of the devil, 
mentally. They knew very well that the devil was driven 
out of this person, there was no argument on that line. 
The question to-day .among some children of the devil is, 
Did God ever perform miracles? On that day, when the 
devil was driven out of that dumb person, it was not a 
question whether God performed miracles or not; it was 
19 



290 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

admitted on all hands, by friends and foes, that this one 
who could not speak, who could not see, who could not 
hear, now can speak and see and hear, that a mighty 
miracle had been done; but these dumb devils made the 
dumb Pharisees argue that the deed was done by the devils 
themselves. Wasn't that dumb? Did you ever see a devil 
try to drive a devil out? The Lord Jesus Christ holds up 
before them a picture: Here is a man possessing a certain 
palace, defending certain articles. Can a man who is 
weaker than that one come and take possession? No. 
But a stronger man comes, and conquers the weaker. Are 
they friends, or are they foes? Any one who is not men- 
tally possessed of the devil, any man who is not possessed 
with dumbness can see that a devil would not come and 
drive a devil out. And so, by one argument, the Lord 
Jesus Christ shows these Pharisees that they themselves 
are made dumb mentally by these dumb devils. 

3. Then there are some, also, who are made dumb cu- 
riously. There were a number of people there who did not 
openly defy the Savior as the Pharisees did, but they came 
to Him out of pure curiosity, and said, "Show us a sign 
from heaven." They had just seen that a devil was driven 
out. In their own minds they were thoroughly convinced 
that this is the Son of God; nevertheless, they had some- 
where in their heads a bump of curiosity; they would love 
to see some wonderful sign, some other great miracle — a 
new sun put in the heavens at one word, a new moon put 
up there, or an extra star to fly through the skies — any- 
thing that shall finally lead them to the conviction that 
this is the Son of God. In other words, it was the devil's 
plan to get the Lord Jesus Christ to obey these dumb devils 
instead of being the commander Himself. How many peo- 
ple there are in these days that always want another sign, 
just another little evidence — if the Lord God will come now 
and heal my sickness, then I will believe in Him; if the 
Lord God will come now and answer this special prayer of 
mine, then I will believe in Him; if the Lord God will come 
now and perform some wonderful thing He never did be- 
fore, then I will believe in Him. Oh! what fools we were 
the other day to go to the opera house to see a man per- 



THIRD SUNDAY IN LENT. 291 

form miracles. All of that curiosity that is constantly 
watching for God to do something He never did before 
is simply the effort of the dumb devils trying to make 
us believe that God has not done enough. If you are 
not satisfied with the Word that God has given; if you 
are not satisfied with the miracles He has performed; if 
you are not satisfied with the plain preaching of the Gos- 
pel as you hear it; if you are not satisfied now to accept 
Jesus Christ, it is because you are still curiously possessed 
of the devil. 

4. Then there are some people again whom these dumb 
devils possess neutrally. There was a class of people when 
this great miracle was performed that simply wondered. 
"And it came to pass, when the devil was gone out, the 
dumb spake; and the people wondered." Matthew tells 
us that they asked the question: "Is this not the Son of 
David?" But that is all we know about it; they won- 
dered — and we do not know whether they were for Christ 
or for the devil. They tried to occupy neutral ground. 
The Lord Jesus Christ, seeing their neutrality, cried out in 
these words: "He that is not with Me is against Me; and 
he that gathereth not with Me scattereth." Here you have 
the picture of the man or woman in this house this morn- 
ing who is not a professed Christian ; who is not a member 
of any church, or not baptized; who does not go to the 
Lord's Supper, and, on the other hand, would not want to 
be called a child of the devil, would not want to be called 
unfriendly to the Church, would not want to be counted 
among the people that are on the side against God, and 
yet the fact is that they are neutrally possessed of the 
devil. Neutrally — they imagine they are holding a posi- 
tion somewhere that is not against God, but not just ex- 
actly in favor of the devil either. They would not say any- 
thing to hurt the Church, and they would not do anything 
to help her along; standing, as it were, at the point of two 
roads, one leading to heaven and the other to hell; they 
are just waiting to see which way to go. The truth of it 
is there is no point in these two roads at all. There are 
only two ways. "Enter ye in at the straight gate: for wide 
is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruc- 



292 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

tion, and many there be which go in thereat. Because 
straight is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth 
unto life, and few there be that find it." Every man in 
this house this morning, every person in the city of Mans- 
field this morning, every person in the world this morning, 
is either on the road going direct to hell, or on the road 
that is going to heaven, and if Satan can make you believe 
that you occupy neutral ground, and keep you in that spirit 
and in that mind, you will die, and some morning you will 
wake up in hell. Oh, will you allow yourselves to be made 
dumb by these dumb devils? How long are you going to 
stand and not know whether you are for God or against 
Him? How long are* you going to stand where you are, 
thinking you are neither gathering nor scattering? May 
this Word of God this morning come home to your hearts 
and waken you up from the sinful sleep of damnation. 
"He that is not for Me is against Me; and he that does not 
gather with Me scattereth." 

5. Then these devils possess some people, or rather 
repossess them, eternally. "When the unclean spirit is 
gone out of a man, he walketh through dry places, seeking 
rest ; and finding none, he saith, I will return unto my house 
whence I came out. And when he cometh, he findeth it 
swept and garnished. Then goeth he, and taketh to him 
seven other spirits more wicked than himself; and they 
enter in, and dwell there: and the last state of that man is 
worse than the first." It is a remarkable fact that, in con- 
nection with this same lesson, Matthew and Mark imme- 
diately follow it with the great teaching of the sin against 
the Holy Ghost, and that there is a sin that can be forgiven 
neither in this world nor in the world to come, and it does 
seem to me we learn from the lesson this morning what the 
sin against the Holy Ghost is. Here is a man possessed 
of the devil, as all people are by nature when they are born 
in this world; then come the means of grace, the search- 
light of heaven is turned in on those souls, the dumb devil 
is cast out by the Holy Spirit through the means of grace; 
the soul is cleansed, the body is healed; the child, once a 
child of Satan, is now a child of God — swept and garnished, 
says the Holy Spirit — cleansed. Now the devil goeth around 



THIRD SUNDAY IN LENT. 293 

in dry places trying to find rest and findeth it not; lie conies 
back, and lie discovers that this person, once a child of God, 
a person from whom he once moved out, is ready to receive 
him again. He goes out and hunts up seven other devils, 
and they come back, and they all go into that man, and 
they dwell there; they stay there; they repossess him. He 
has had all the light any man on earth can get. Not satis- 
fied with that light, he bids welcome to the devil once more, 
and to the devils once more, they stay there, and that man 
never will repent again; he never wants to repent any 
more; his heart is hardened; his soul is now sevenfold pos- 
sessed, and he goes on, possessed, into hell— lost — lost for- 
ever! Oh, the dumb devils in this w^orld! They possess 
men, and repossess them forever. Isn't it time that people 
are waking up? 

Conclusion: Thanks be to God, we do not need to be 
possessed of the devil. Tradition tells us that Martha and 
Mary had a young lady living with them who w^as thor- 
oughly in love, spiritually, with Jesus Christ. Her name, 
it is said, was Marcella; and, tradition goes on, further- 
more, and tells us that this maid was present when the 
Lord Jesus Christ drove this devil out of the dumb person; 
and when she saw that great act of Jesus, like many a good 
mother w r ho would love to be the mother of a minister of 
the Gospel and a true servant of God, this maiden w^ould 
gladly have been Mary, the mother of this great Son of 
God, and in that ecstacy of joy, in that delight to be the 
mother of such a Master, she cried out: "Blessed is the 
womb that bare Thee, and the paps wdiich Thou hast 
sucked!" "Yea," saith the Lord, "you are right, it is a 
blessing to be My mother; it was a high state for My 
mother to be the mother of the Son of God, who became 
Son of Man, but I want you to understand, Marcella, you 
can be more than simply My mother ; I want you to under- 
stand that that would do you little good in eternity to have 
been My mother, for I have brothers who are not what 
they ought to be, and My mother w^as not always what she 
should have been, and on the cross I wall not call her 
mother, but only call her woman — she is not to be wor- 
shiped; Marcella, I will tell you something to-day you may 



294 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

not have heard before: 'Blessed are they that hear the 
Word of God and keep it." Did you ever stop to thinly 
that you can be more than Mary was; did you ever stop to 
think that when you hear God's Word, and keep it, that 
you are more than the virgin Mary; when you hear this 
Word of God, and believe it, and accept Jesus Christ as the 
only Savior, and walk in His foot-prints and be faithful un- 
til death, and have your sins washed away in holy baptism, 
according to the Word of God, 'According to His mercy He 
saved me by the washing of regeneration and renewing of 
the Holy Ghost/ then you are children of God, and then 
you are more than Mary. Yea, rather, blessed are they 
that hear the Word of God and keep it." 

And now, allow me to put two or three questions to you, 
as a congregation: 

1. What are you hearing? Remember that this Book 
that lies before us to-day is God's letter from heaven; re- 
member that this is the Word through which the Holy 
Spirit comes to man; let us remember that this is the Word 
of God, of which Jesus said: "He that is of God heareth 
God's words ; ye therefore hear them not because ye are not 
of God." Are you in the habit of hearing God's Word 
every Sunday? Is it only an accident that you have come 
into the house of God this morning? If you do not love 
God's Word and hear it, then Christ is not your Master. 

2. Where are you standing? Have you not heard from 
the Son of God just now that "he that is not for Me is 
against me?' Are you really on God's side or not? Can 
you truthfully say to-day that Jesus Christ the Son of 
Mary and the Son of God is your all in all, or are you still 
standing out and occupying neutral ground, waiting, and 
waiting, and waiting, until some morning you will discover 
the awful truth of the words: "He that is not for Me is 
against Me?" 

3. What are you doing? He that does not gather with 
Me scattereth. We have in our Saturday class one hun- 
dred and forty-eight little children studying God's word; 
we have in our afternoon class about thirty catechumens 
studying God's Word; we have in our Friday evening 
class now, about forty adults studying God's Word; we 



THIRD SUNDAY IN LENT. 295 

have a Sunday-School of from eight to ten hundred who 
are here, and should be here, to study God's Word. What 
are you doing for all of these schools? Have you asked 
a single child to come to that Saturday morning school? 
If you have not, you have said, "Stay away." Have you 
asked a single scholar to come to the Friday evening class, 
to learn more of salvation? If you have not, you have 
said, "Stay away." Are you personally doing anything 
to build up the First Lutheran Sunday School? If not, 
you are trying to fight Superintendent Smith; you are 
trying to fight me; you are trying to fight fifty-two teach- 
ers; you are trying to fight God. "He that does not gather 
with Me scattereth." If a man were to come into this 
service this morning and begin to drive the people out we 
would say he was possessed of the devil, but if you do not 
try to bring people into the church you are doing that. It 
is time that we are getting our minds cleared up; it is time 
that we are understanding that you and I have to give a 
personal account before a personal God, on the judgment 
day, for what we do and for what we leave undone. 

I know very well that we cannot always be in the house 
of God. I know one of my own family has not been here 
for two months, who would love to be here this morning; 
I know that we cannot always do what we should love to 
do, but is it possible that in a congregation of fifteen hun- 
dred members there were only seven men last Thursday 
evening who could be here to hear of the sufferings and 
death of the Lord Jesus Christ? Is that possible? Shall 
I pat you on the shoulder and say, "You dear good soldier, 
all right?" On the judgment day you would condemn me 
for it. I say, it is time you were waking up and serving 
the Lord your God. You are falling asleep and do not know 
it. May God forgive those who are so careless and so 
reckless as to go to sleep, thinking they are serving God 
while they are sleeping. "He that is not for Me is against 
Me." It is bad enough that the kingdom of God is spread- 
ing as slowly as it is, but Iioav much worse it is that it is 
being hindered, not by children of the devil half as much 
as by sleepy Christians. What I am saying is not in anger 
but in love, sanctified from on high. 



296 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

May God's Holy Spirit lead us to a deeper appreciation 
of the Word of God, and of His ministry, and of His pres- 
ence, sanctifying us to eternal life, this is my prayer. Amen. 

PRAYER. 

O God, our Heavenly Father, we realize that in this world there is 
much of darkness, and we realize that a great deal of our dumbness is caused 
by the dumb devil that possessed the person out of whom Thou didst drive 
him, when they claimed that Thou didst Thyself as prince of hell cast out 
devils by the power of Beelzebub. God, we thank Thee for Thy victory 
over hell and Satan, and we pray Thee this morning that Thou wilt bless 
Thy servant in the message he has delivered fearlessly in Thy name. Heav- 
enly Father, it is a good thing sometimes even in our weakness to become 
perfectly dissatisfied with the servant of God, in order that we may wake up 
and find that we ought to be dissatisfied with ourselves. We pray Thee that 
Thou wilt help us to have at least clear minds, if our bodies are weak, and 
that we may see things as Thou wouldst have us see them, that we may walk 
in the path Thou hast selected for us, and stay in the center of it, and move 
forward, by Thy power from on high. O Lord, do Thou wake up every soul 
in the hearing of Thy Gospel this morning. Give us every one that unction 
from on high that will make us love to dwell in Thy courts, and love to make 
good use of Thy means of grace, and be faithful unto death, that at last 
we may receive the crown of eternal life, through Jesus Christ, our only 
Savior, who taught us to pray : 

Our Father, who art in heaven ; Hallowed be Thy name ; Thy kingdom 
come ; Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our 
daily bread ; and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass 
against us. Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil, for Thine 
is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory forever and ever. Amen. 



FOURTH SUNDAY IN LENT. 



LET NOTHING BE LOST. 



John 6 : 1-15. 
44 1 V FTER these things Jesus went over the sea of Galilee, which is the 



H 



sea of Tiberias. And a great multitude followed Him, because 
they saw His miracles which He did on them that were diseased. 
And Jesus went up into a mountain, and there He sat with His disciples. 
And the passover, a feast of the Jews, was nigh. When Jesus then lifted 
up His eyes, and saw a great company come unto Him, He saith to Philip, 
'Whence shall we buy bread for these to eat?' And this He said to prove 
him: for He Himself knew what He would do. Philip answered Him: 
'Two hundred pennyworth of bread is not sufficient for them, that every one 
of them may take a little.' One of His disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter's 
brother, saith unto Him : 'There is a lad here, which hath five barley loaves, 
and two small fishes: but what are they among so many?' And Jesus said: 
'Make the men sit down.' Now there was much grass in the place. So the 
men sat down, in number about five thousand. And Jesus took the loaves ; 
and when He had given thanks, He distributed to the disciples, and the 
disciples to them that were set down ; and likewise of the fishes as much as 
they would. When they were filled, He said unto His disciples, 'Gather up 
the fragments that remain, that nothing be lost.' Therefore they gathered 
them together, and filled twelve baskets with the fragments of the five barley 
loaves, which remained over and above unto them that had eaten. Then those 
men, when they had seen the miracle that Jesus did, said, 'This is of a truth 
that prophet that should come into the world.' When Jesus therefore per- 
ceived that they would come and take Him by force, to make Him a king, He 
departed again into a mountain Himself alone." 

Sanctify us, O Lord, through Thy Truth; 
Thy Word is Truth. Amen. 



Dear Children in Christ : — 

The Word of God is truth, or you would not all be here 
this morning hungry to hear it, and, little children, let me say 
a word to you : There are some people who think that you do 
not love God's Word as little children, and do not need it, 

297 



298 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

and therefore might stay at home. Assure these people, by 
your good attention, and by your growth in grace, that you 
love the Lord Jesus Christ and His Word, just as much as 
any person in this house. 

There is something sad in the very word " lost." If 
some one were to come to me this morning and say, " I have 
just lost my home," I would be a hard-hearted man if I had 
no sympathy for that one. 

No wonder that man in Omaha, when his little son was 
taken, and a letter thrown into his yard stating, that un- 
less he put twenty-five thousand dollars in gold at a certain 
place by a certain time, the little boy's eyes would be taken 
out of his head; no wonder that father Avent and counted 
out his twenty-five thousand dollars and laid them down, 
for it meant something to him to have his boy lost. 

Those families in Canada and in the northern part of our 
own United States who have received the message that a 
ship is lost on the Atlantic with sixty passengers for Paris, 
and has been lost for fourteen days, are in trouble to-day, and 
no wonder; it is no small matter for a vessel, either in war 
or in storm, to go down in the ocean with its human freight. 
A ship lost — much lost. But sadder than the home, and 
sadder than the loss of a single child in the family, and sad- 
der than the loss of the body in the sea, is the real loss of an 
immortal soul. It was to save souls that Jesus Christ came 
into the world; it was to save souls that Jesus Christ started 
for Calvary; it was to save souls that Jesus Christ was on 
His way to Jerusalem and to the Passover, He Himself being 
the great Lamb of God that bears away the sins of the world ; 
and it is this Savior, and only Savior, who does not want souls 
to be lost — who even said of the smallest things : "Gather 
up the fragments, that nothing be lost." — That nothing be 
lost! May the Holy Spirit this morning help us to dwell 
upon this theme: 

LET NOTHING BE LOST. 

I. However small. 
II. However great. 

I. There are some small things alluded to in the text 
of the morning, and God did not want any of them to be lost. 



FOURTH SUNDAY IN LENT. 21M) 

1. Let there never be lost a single useless tear. As we 
heard in this morning's Sunday-school lesson, John the Bap- 
tist had been beheaded by llerod; the disciples were broken 
hearted; they took the body of John and gave it a decent 
burial. It is said that the hard hearted Herod, or rather, 
his ungodly wife, even tore the tongue out of the head of 
John the Baptist. But the disciples of God loved his body, 
loved the man, and gave him a decent burial, and came to 
Jesus and told Him the news about the death and the burial 
of that greatest man on earth. But instead of Jesus shed- 
ding tears, He shed none. Instead of going to the grave, He 
went another way. Instead of making any remark, He kept 
silent. In other words, there was no use in shedding a use- 
less tear. There are times when tears are in place, and I do 
believe, my dear friends, that we shed too few tears for the 
living; I believe we shed too few tears for the suffering; I 
believe we shed too few tears for the lost. I wish I could 
shed tears as Dr. Luther did. Oh! what a power there 
would be in tears for the lost in this world. But when 
one has died in Jesus name, and has gone home to glory; 
when a John the Baptist has gone out of a prison and dun- 
geon, with his head cut off, but crowned by an angel with 
the crown of eternal life, and gone home to glory, why shed 
tears? Let no useless tear be lost. 

2. I would say, furthermore, Let no moment be lost — 
no precious moment. There are few of us who realize the 
value of time as we ought. It is said by Shakespeare: " I 
wasted time, and now doth Time waste me." Again, it is 
said by Bacon : " A man that is young in years may be old 
in hours, if he has lost no time." I do not believe there was 
ever a more beautiful passage written by uninspired man, 
than that of Horace Mann, when he said : " Lost — some- 
where between sunrise and sunset, two golden hours, each 
set with sixty diamond minutes. No reward is offered, for 
they are gone forever." The moment lost is gone forever. 
We find that on that day when Jesus went over to the desert, 
it was a busy day. The apostles had been sent out with 
power to heal and to drive out devils and to preach the Gos- 
pel ; they came back to report, so tired and so hungry that 
Jesus said, " Come and take your rest." It was a busy day 



300 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

for the multitude who had been watching Jesus heal the sick, 
and when the Savior stepped into one of the little ships to 
cross over to the other side, they ran along the lake and 
reached the other shore before the ship did. No time lost 
anywhere — every one busy. Oh, that we might not lose a 
moment of valuable time. If such a man as James Cook 
would not even wait five minutes on dinner without taking 
out his dictionary and hunting up synonyms ; if such a man 
as Gladstone never for a day would go about without some 
little book in his pocket, that he might not lose a moment; 
if such a man as Benjamin Franklin would do as he did in his 
book-store one day, we ought to learn the value of time. A 
man came to his book-store one day and asked the price of a 
book ; the clerk says, " That book is worth one dollar ;" the 
purchaser says : " Can I see Benjamin Franklin?" " Well, 
hardly, he is a very busy man." " But I want to see him on 
important business " — and so the clerk went and called 
Benjamin Franklin out of his printing office, brought him for- 
ward, and he said, " What will you have?" " I want to buy 
this book and your clerk says I cannot get it for less than 
one dollar ; I want it just as cheap as you can let me have it." 
He says, " You can have it for a dollar and a quarter." " A 
dollar and a quarter? Your clerk said I could have it for a 
dollar; I want it cheaper from you, the proprietor." Ben- 
jamin Franklin started back toward his printing press. The 
man said, " What is the very least you will take for that 
book?" " One dollar and a half." " One dollar and a half? 
You just told me you would take a dollar and a quarter, and 
your clerk said he would take a dollar, now you want a dol- 
lar and a half!" Benjamin Franklin replied : " I want you 
to understand that I could better afford to have taken one 
dollar five minutes ago, than to take one dollar and a half 
now," and the man had to pay a dollar and a half before he 
got the book, learning that day that time is worth something. 
I was wondering this morning when I saw the Sunday- 
school teachers strolling in five minutes after the call, whether 
they really stopped to think of the value of time, keeping 
eight hundred people here waiting live minutes. Five times 
eight hundred is how much? Over 66 hours! Just stop 
aud think of the time you are robbing these people of. I tell 



FOURTH SUNDAY IN LENT. 301 

you, my friends, we must not let one valuable moment be lost, 
whether it is in business or whether it is in church, whether 
it is for your body, or for your soul. 

3. Another thing we should never allow to be lost is a 
little needed rest. Let us not forget, my friends, that the 
Lord Jesus Christ Himself said to those busy apostles: "You 
have not even had leisure to eat; come with Me into the 
desert and take a little rest." You will remember, from 
the words of the text which I have read this morning, that 
when that vast multitude came to Him on the other side of 
the shore, and the bread was broken, and thanks given to 
God, He said, "Make the men sit down.' 7 It almost becomes 
necessary in this busy age, when some men forget all about 
their souls, and forget all about their Bibles, forget all 
about their church, forget all about heaven, and forget all 
about hell, it seems almost important that some great 
omniscient power should come and say, "Make the men sit 
down." The man who works day and night robs the world 
of his usefulness; the one who does not know that night is 
given for sleep, robs the world of his usefulness; the man 
who does not know that God set apart one day out of seven, 
to keep that day holy as the Lord's day, that man is rob- 
bing his family and robbing himself, robbing the church 
and robbing the world, of a useful man. Let no needed rest 
be lost. 

4. Let no clear mind be lost. I am talking now about 
little things. Some men may think the mind is a great 
thing. In a certain sense it is. The mind of a man is a 
great deal greater than the mind of a brute. The mind of 
man has done some great things in this w T orld in the way of 
science and discovery; the mind of man has built large tab- 
ernacles and sky-scrapers; the mind of man has traversed 
the sea and tunneled the mountain, but, with all that, the 
mind of man compared with the Omniscient mind of God 
is a very little thing. In our lesson of to-day we have three 
minds brought together — the mind of the Omniscient Sa- 
vior, and the little minds of Philip and Andrew. So the 
Great Mind comes to the little minds, and says: "What 
shall we do to feed this great multitude?" Jesus knew 
w T hat He would do, but He said this to prove Philip and try 



302 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

him — to try the little mind of man; and so the little mind 
of man, with all its greatness, said: "What can we do with 
two-hundred pennyworth of bread among so many people; 
we cannot give a taste to each one of them"; and Andrew 
looked around and saw a little boy there, with five barley 
loaves and two small fishes, and, with his little mind, look- 
ing at these five loaves and two small fishes and at the 
great multitude, said: "What are these among so many?" 
So the Lord Jesus Christ thought of those two men that 
day, that, while their minds are little, they must not lose 
them. You and I need our reasoning power. Philip's rea- 
soning was good, and so was Andrew's reasoning good, but 
they stopped too soon; they did not go far enough and rea- 
son further, that He that made the bread that is in these 
barley loaves, and He that made these two little fishes in 
the sea, is the same God that is in our midst and can feed 
this great multitude; and so what the Lord Jesus wanted 
those two men to learn that day, and what He wants you 
and me to learn this morning is this: that, after all, our 
minds, great as they may be, are very little minds and we 
must not lose them. You who are this morning living with- 
out Christ Jesus as your Savior, living without remission 
of your sins, living in your own morality, which amounts 
to nothing, you have lost your minds. Wise men from the 
East came and sought their Savior, and fools try to .get 
away from Christ. Do not lose your little minds. 

5. And I would say, furthermore, that the Lord God 
does not want us to lose our helping hands. Judas had 
two hundred pence in his treasury, and they all had good 
strong arms and good strong hands. Jesus did not say: 
"Now, disciples, sit down and do nothing." He did not 
say: "Judas, go and tie your money bag up and keep it to 
yourself," but, "Go to these boys and pay them for their 
fish, and pay them for their bread; make use of the fund 
that you have got. And, now, you men who have no 
money, you have hands, and hearts and feet. Make the 
men sit down." And, when the men were sitting down, 
these men had to come and take the bread out of the hands 
of Jesus and carry it over and put it into the hands of the 
multitude. The disciples had to wait until the last, but 



FOURTH SUNDAY IN LENT. 303 

they did not starve; by giving to the multitude they did not 
lose anything, but in the end they had left twelve baskets- 
full, by giving their loving, helping hands to others. It 
does seem to me in this day of selfishness, when every man 
is thinking of himself and forgetting his neighbor; when 
every man is looking out for his own self and forgetting 
those around him, that we should not forget our helping 
hands; let us not lose our helping hands. There is no hap- 
pier life on earth than to make others happy. The man 
who wants to be really happy must make some one else 
happy. There is nothing makes the world more miserable 
than pure selfishness, grasping and never giving. The 
Dead Sea is a dead sea because it has an inlet and no out- 
let, and there are so many people in this world who want 
inlets but want no outlets and the consequence is that they 
are dead seas in a community. What the Lord God wants 
of us is not to lose our helping hands. Jesus made the dis- 
ciples work that day in order to feed the multitude. 

5. Let me mention, in conclusion, about the little 
things — we are not to lose the crumbs. The Lord Jesus, 
who makes the harvests, who can make bread with His 
Word, was very careful, when the feast was over, to com- 
mand the disciples to go and pick up the fragments, that 
nothing be lost. Sweeping crumbs out of the door will 
make the richest family poor. We are in the habit of call- 
ing some people stingy and close because they are saving. 
For my part, I admire a saving woman; I admire a saving 
man; I despise the spendthrift, the man who does not know 
how to save God's gifts distributed among him and others. 
When A. T. Stewart told his servant girl she would have to 
leave because she burned two ends of a match — you will 
remember that in that day there was brimstone at both 
ends of the match — that girl went home, and her father 
grew angry. , The next day he met this same man in the 
store, and some one came to A. T. Stewart and said, "Give 
us a subscription for such and such an institution," and 
that great man put down fifteen thousand dollars. Then 
the father of the girl began to raise his voice in ridicule, 
and said, "Look at the hypocrite! He is the man who puts 
down fifteen thousand dollars in order to make a show, 



304 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

and yesterday he kicked my daughter out of his home be- 
cause she burned two ends of a match." The victory, how- 
ever, Avas on the side of A. T. Stewart, and not on the side 
of the father. A. T. Stewart, in true humility and as a per- 
fect gentleman, said to the father: "If I had not been sav- 
ing two ends of the match all the days of my life, I could 
not give these fifteen thousand dollars for this good institu- 
tion." The reason some of you have no homes, and never 
will have; one reason some of you have not a dollar for the 
Christian Church; one reason some of you have nothing for 
benevolence, is because all your life, either you or some one 
in your family have been burning both ends of the match. 
Let us not lose the little crumbs. The ocean is made up of 
drops of water; the mountains are made up of grains of 
sand; fortunes are made up of pennies. Beware of covet- 
ousness, which is idolatry, but, on the other hand, beware 
that you do not sweep the crumbs out of the door> for that 
will make the richest family poor. 

II. Let nothing be lost, however great. There are some 
great things mentioned in our text to-day. One is the 
Word of God. 

1. "Then those men, when they had seen the miracle 
that Jesus did, said, 'This is of a truth that prophet that 
should come into the world.' " And some of the other evan- 
gelists do not only narrate the great miracle, but that He 
preached the Word of God. In other words, those people 
did not run along that lake that day because they wanted 
the exercise, but they ran because they wanted to hear the 
message of the Son of God; they wanted to hear the Word 
of the Savior, who was going up to the passover; they 
wanted to hear another message from Him who taught as 
one having authority. The great Word of God, my friends, 
we must not lose. If those disciples were willing to leave 
their homes and proclaim this Word to a dying world; if 
the great multitudes were willing to leave their homes and 
run along the shore of the lake to hear the sermon; if men 
and women and children were willing to stay there until 
night, hungry, in order to hear more of God's Word, then 
do not sit down, within a stone's throw of a Christian 



FOURTH SUM) AY IN LENT. 305 

Church, like a heathen, and never go to God's house. I am 
sorry I am always talking to the man who should not hear 
these things, and missing the one that should, but it may 
be there is some one in this house this morning, just here 
by accident, in the habit of going somewhere every Sunday 
and neglecting God's eternal truth, and it is to you I say 
this morning, Do not lose God's great Word. It is this 
Great Word that made the bread that day, and the fish, to 
multiply, and subtract, and add, and divide; it is that same 
God that is giving us the harvest; it is that same Word that 
is in our midst this morning, and is in itself a power. Paul 
was not a great man in himself, but he was a great man in 
God, and said: "I am not ashamed of the Gospel of Jesus 
Christ, for it is the power of God unto salvation to every 
one that believeth." 

2. And while we are having the privilege of hearing 
this great Word of God, let us not lose the Lamb of God. 
"And the passover, a feast of the Jews, was nigh. 77 You 
know the story of the passover. The shedding of the blood 
of that animal in the days of the passover was only a type 
of Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God, that taketh away the sins 
of the world. When Jesus heard that John had been killed 
He immediately let his mind go, not to the tomb of John, 
but over to Calvary's hill. He immediately saw His own 
cross; He immediately noticed this, that the time was com- 
ing when the Son of God should die for the sins of the 
world, and offer up Himself. My friends, let us be careful 
that we do not lose the Lamb of God. It is said in the 
last verse of my text: "When Jesus therefore perceived 
that they would come and take Him by force, to make Him 
a king, He departed again into a mountain Himself alone." 
They lost Him. They lost Him because they would not 
let Him be what He wanted to be, and wanted to force Him 
to be what He did not want to be. They tried to make a 
king on earth of Him, so they lost the Lamb of God. Be- 
ware that, after hearing Christ and Him crucified in your 
own city for years and years, you do not die some day as 
suddenly as the lightning flash — a lost man — and lose your 
Savior. He is too great to lose. You cannot afford to lose 



306 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

the only Savior of the world, when you can be saved so 
easily. "He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved, 
and he that believeth not shall be damned." 

3. And do not lose another great thing: saving faith. 
Peter and Andrew and these disciples had a certain faith; 
but, oh! how weak it was. If they could not see the bread 
right in their hands, they thought they would starve; if 
they could not see the fish right on the table, they thought : 
Now is no chance to eat fish; if they could not see the wheat 
fields covered with harvests, they thought, We have got to 
starve. The Lord Jesus Christ proved them. He tried to 
teach them to have faith in Him, to trust Him at all times. 
When we cannot see the way, let us trust, and still obey. 
It is an easy thing to follow Jesus as long as He makes the 
bread for us; it is an easy thing to follow Jesus as long as 
He is supplying the fish for us; it is an easy thing to follow 
Jesus when everything goes our way, but what are you 
going to do in that hour when it looks as if all the dark- 
ness of the world had overwhelmed you? What are you 
going to do in that hour when it looks as if the very hand 
of God was short, and the very heavens were brass, and 
your prayers were not being heard any more? W^hat are 
you going to do then? Then, my friends, is the time to 
trust God. When we cannot see the way, let us trust and 
still obey. Do not lose a great faith. 

4. Let me ask you not to lose God's great Providence. 
"When Jesus then lifted up His eyes, and saw a great com- 
pany come unto Him, He saith unto Phillip, whence shall we 
buy bread, that these may eat? And this He said to prove 
him: for He Himself knew what He would do." He Him- 
self knew what He would do. That is Providence. The 
Lord Jesus Christ was not bothering His head about the 
feeding of this multitude. He knew what He would do, 
and He knows what He is doing to-day, and He will know 
what He is going to do from now on until the judgment. 
In Him we live, and move, and have our being. He knows 
the hairs on our heads, and not a sparrow falls without His 
knowledge. What is the use for you and me to bother 
ourselves about the victory between Kussia and Japan? 
God knows what He is going to do there. What was the 



FOURTH SUNDAY IN LENT. :W7 

use for you and me to bother ourselves about the victory 
down in Houth Africa? God knew what He was doing. 
What is the use for you and me to bother ourselves about 
what is taking place beyond our control in our own fam- 
ilies? God knows what He is doing. I do not mean to 
say that we should be careless, that we should be reckless, 
that we should have nothing at all to do in this world, and 
let God go on and do it, but this is what I mean: When 
God says, Pick up the bread, pick it up; when God says, 
Carry it over to the multitude, carry it over, and as for 
supplying the wants of the multitude, let God attend to 
that. You and I have plain duties lying before us. We 
are to love our God with all our hearts, souls, minds, 
strength, and our neighbors as ourselves. We know that 
we have come short, and know that we are sinners. We 
are to trust in Christ as our Savior, as our Healer, as the 
One who can take care of body and soul, and to make use 
of all the means of grace He has given us, and then go on 
and do our duty, and what God does He is doing all right. 
He knows what He is doing. We think it is a terrible 
thing for the mother to be taken out of our homes. God 
knows what He is doing. We think it is a terrible thing 
for our pastor to die. God knows what He is doing. We 
think it is a terrible thing for our only son to die. God 
knows what He is doing. I do not need to know, thank 
God, I do not need to know; it is enough for God to know 
what He is doing. As I look back over my life, I find out 
that everything He has done for me was right; as I look 
over the history of the W T ord of God, from that day in the 
garden of Eden until now, I see that everything that God 
did was right; and I know that what He does in the future 
will be right. Let us not lose the wonderful gift of God's 
Providence — that all things work together for good to them 
who love God. 

5. Let us not lose another great thing — that is Chris- 
tian gratitude. Thanks to God for all His gifts. I am sat- 
isfied that every one in this house, either in your present 
family or in your father's family, or in your grandfather's 
family, have come from a Christian home. I will dare say 
there is not a soul in this house to-day who cannot look 



308 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

back somewhere and find a Christian father or mother, a 
Christian grandfather or grandmother, or a Christian great- 
grandfather or great-grandmother; I will dare say, further- 
more, that you well remember that when you went to that 
old home you never sat down to the table without prayer; 
and I will dare say, furthermore, that you never went back 
to some of those homes without having family worship; 
and yet to-day there are even professed Christians who sit 
down to their tables and eat without prayer, when the Lord 
Jesus Christ, the very maker of the bread, would not even 
take those five loaves and the two fishes and give them to 
the multitude until He had looked up to heaven and given 
thanks to His Heavenly Father. Let us beware that we do 
not lose our gratitude to God. Let us beware that we do 
not lose our true manhood. When that great German mis- 
sionary went to Berlin, and sat down to a restaurant table 
and offered prayer, a young man criticized him, rather 
laughed at him, and, addressing the missionary said: 
"Does everything pray up there where you come from"? 
The missionary looked around a moment, saw his peculiar 
position, and said, with all reverence: "No, young man; 
there are things up there where I live that do not pray; 
they have four feet instead of two, as you have; they walk 
on four legs instead of two, as you do, erect and built to 
look up into heaven; they have big flap ears, and rings in 
their noses; they eat and they do not pray — like you." 
There you have the picture of the great thing that young 
man lost — he had no respect for his mother, no respect for 
his father, no respect for his God; he had no thanksgiving 
in his heart, and while he had the soul of man he had the 
action of the brute. You may talk all you please about 
your prayer meeting. No man loves a good prayer more 
than I do, but I say that just as long as we pray in public 
and will not have family worship at home we are hypo- 
crites. What we want is not to forget gratitude to God at 
the table, and I would do one thing or the other — I would 
go home to-day, and say, "Let us ask God's blessing for the 
food before we eat it," or I would cease to call myself a 
Christian. 



FOURTH SUNDAY IN LENT. 309 

6. Just one thing more, that some people do not con- 
sider great — Divine order. We are told by Mark that this 
great multitude was divided most beautifully. First of 
all, the men had to separate themselves from the women 
and the children; and, in the next place, one hundred men 
had to sit down in a row, and then another hundred men 
before them in a row, and then another hundred men be- 
fore them in a row. It took time, but, my dear friends, it 
pays to spend time to get order out of confusion. The 
people had come there, and had seen the miracle; they had 
heard the sermon. Some were for Christ and some were 
against Him — just as they are in the First Lutheran 
Church — some like the preacher and some do not, some like 
the truth and some do not, and there they stand and argue, 
some for and some against, some sitting down and some 
standing up, confusion all around. Jesus Christ said, 
"Make the men sit down/' He wanted order, and the next 
thing was to put one hundred in a row, fifty rows, one hun- 
dred in each. Mark tells us that they sat down in fifties 
and hundreds. That is not hard to count — one hundred in 
a row, and fifty rows, makes five thousand. Imagine five 
thousand men down on their knees before God, besides the 
women and the children. My dear friends, we ought to 
learn a lesson from that beautiful scene, and let everything 
be done decently and in order. God is the God of order. 
You do not find the stars flying around one place to-night, 
another place the next night; you do not find the sun ever 
going out of its course by the breadth of a needle, it is in its 
place. Everything is in place* but sinners, and what God 
wants of us is order. There are some things that are set- 
tled by the Word of God. We do not decide doctrines by 
the votes of the people. No Church Council, no congrega- 
tion on earth can settle whether infant baptism is right or 
wrong. God's Word must settle that. No man, nor any 
thousand men, can settle any doctrine of God's Word or of 
the Lutheran Church. It is all settled by the Word of the 
eternal God, but the Church of God is a church of liberty, 
and there are questions coming before us that are purely 
formal. It makes no difference whether you kneel in 



310 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

prayer, or stand up in prayer; it makes no difference 
whether you come into the church with the men on one side 
and the women on the other, but one thing is sure, God does 
want order in everything. When the superintendent taps 
his bell, order demands that every teacher stop; when we 
call for the hour of service at 10:15, it demands that every 
Christian should be in his place; when we call for the hour 
of prayer, every one should be in prayer. Oh, let us not 
overlook divine order, and when we look at these things in 
that light, we will begin to be more united in everything. 
No difference how much I may want a certain thing, if it 
is a question of judgment and you decide against me, it be- 
comes my duty as a man to abide by your decision; but 
when it is a matter of God's Holy Word, I must say, like 
Dr. Luther, "Here I stand, I cannot do otherwise; God 
help me!" 

Conclusion: When the multitude were fed, we find that 
they gathered up twelve baskets of crumbs. I have en- 
deavored to-day to give you twelve baskets full of bread, 
six small baskets and six large ones. Take them home 
with you, prayerfully eat of this bread to-day, digest it 
well, come back to-night, and we will give you some more 
bread, in God's name. Amen. 

PRAYER. 

We thank Thee, our Heavenly Father, that Thou, in Thy creation, didst 
not only say, "Let there be light," and that Thou not only didst establish the 
firmament, but didst plant on this earth the seed which has brought forth 
the harvests, which have not passed away day nor night, but are with us, 
and shall remain with us until the end of the world. We pray Thee, our 
Heavenly Father, that Thou wilt help us to remember that no man can 
make a grain of wheat, that every bite of bread we take is the gift of God ; 
that every fish we eat is a gift of Thine ; that every drop of water is a glo- 
rious gift from heaven ; and we pray Thee that Thou wilt fill our hearts 
with such gratitude to Thee this day as we have never had before. We 
pray Thee that Thou wilt also remind us of our sins for our ingratitude, 
and that Thou wilt show to us the weakness of our own faith ; that Thou 
wilt lead us in the path of righteousness, and make us diligent in the search 
for Thy truth, that nothing may be lost. O God, above all, do Thou help 
that no soul in this house to-day may be lost. Help us to have such a love 
for Thy Truth, and assembling together with Thy people, and for the 
glorifying of Thy holy name in song, that every voice may be lifted up to 



FOURTH SUNDAY IN I.KNT. 311 

Thee in prayer; and do Thou help that all our prayers may be modeled 
after that most beautiful of all prayers, the one which Thou hast taught us: 
Our Father, who art in heaven: Hallowed be Thy name; Thy kingdom 
come; Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our 
daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass 
against us. Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil, for Thine 
is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory forever and ever. Amen. 



FIFTH SUNDAY IN LENT. 



DID JESUS SIN? 



John 8 : 46-59. 

JByyHICH of you convinceth Me of sin? And if I say the truth, why 
CJLJ1 do ye not believe Me? He that is of God heareth God's Words: 
^ ye therefore hear them not, because ye are not of God. Then 
answered the Jews and said unto Him, 'Say we not well that Thou art a 
Samaritan, and hast a devil?' Jesus answered, T have not a devil; but I 
honor My Father, and ye do dishonor Me. And I seek not mine own glory : 
there is One that seeketh and judgeth. Verily, verily, I say unto you,' If a 
man keep My saying, he shall never see death.' Then said the Jews unto 
Him, 'Now we know that Thou hast a devil. Abraham is dead, and the 
prophets ; and Thou sayest, If a man keep my saying, he shall never taste of 
death. Art Thou greater than our father Abraham, which is dead? and 
the prophets are dead: whom makest Thou Thyself?' Jesus answered, 'If 
I honor Myself, My honor is nothing ; it is My Father that honoreth Me ; 
of Whom ye say that He is your God : yet ye have not known Him ; but I 
know Him : and if I should say I know Him not, I shall be a liar like unto 
you : but I know Him, and keep His saying. Your father Abraham re- 
joiced to see My day: and he saw it, and was glad.' Then said the Jews 
unto Him, 'Thou art not yet fifty years old, and hast Thou seen Abraham?' 
Jesus said unto them, 'Verily, verily, I say unto you, 'Before Abraham was, 
I am.' Then took they up stones to cast at Him : but Jesus hid Himself, 
and went out of the temple, going through the midst of them, and so 

passed by." 

Sanctify us, O Lord, through Thy Truth; 
Thy Word is Truth. Amen. 



Dearly Beloved : — 

We have in this lesson this morning the last great 
disputation of Jesus Christ with the Jews. No one 
can read this lesson carefully without noticing what 
a wicked, wicked world we are in. Man, created by 
his God, calls his God a Samaritan, accuses Him of hav- 
ing a devil. There is nothing so bad and so wicked that 
the world has not been found guilty of it; there is no 

312 



FIFTH SUNDAY IN LENT. 616 

crime imaginable that some one has not committed it 
from infanticide to deicide; there is no crime so bloody 
that the hand of man has not been soiled with the blood. 
This wicked world needs salvation, and, to have it, must 
have a Redeemer who is none other than the Almighty 
God. Let us not forget that the soul of one man is worth 
more than all the world. No one could save even a single 
soul, if he were not worth more than all the nations of 
the earth. Where shall we find a Savior worth enough 
to save only the people that are in this vast multitude 
this morning? There is only One in all the universe who 
could pay the debt, and that is the only heir of the only 
God — Jesus Christ. The Psalmist sang long ago: "None 
of them can by any means redeem his brother, nor give 
to God a ransom for him : for the redemption of their soul 
is precious." 

This Savior not only would have to be God, but He 
would have to become a man. He would have to put Him- 
self under the law, and die, and such a Redeemer has come. 
Paul wrote of Him to the Galatians, when he said: "But 
when the fulness of time was come God sent forth His Son, 
made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them 
that were under the law, that we might receive the adop- 
tion of sons." 

But even God Himself, with all His power, having be- 
come man, with all His weakness, would still not have re- 
deemed us, had He not laid down His life for us, and given 
a ransom that paid the debt. Paul said to the Hebrews: 
(or, if not Paul, then the author, whoever he was) "Such 
a High Priest became us, who is holy, harmless, undefiled, 
separate from sinners, and made higher than the heavens. ,, 
We therefore need not only a God-man, but a perfect God- 
man, sinless, sacrificing His life that we might live. The 
question arises this morning: 

DID JESUS SIN? 

May the Holy Spirit help us to get the answer out of His 
Word. 



314 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

It is with reverence that I ask this question: Did Jesus 
sin? We know that He did not sin, and yet I find in look- 
ing over history and the Word of God that: 

I. Some say He did. 
II. None know He did. 

I. Some say He did. This is true of the toorld in gen- 
eral; of the Jews in partieular, and, I am sorry to say, even 
of many professed Christians. 

1. The world has no use for Jesus Christ, and the 
reason is plain. The Savior gave it Himself in John 7 : 7, 
"The world cannot hate you; but Me it hateth, because 
I testify of it, that the works thereof are evil." You will 
remember in connection with the history of Jesus Christ 
and Mcodemus, He said these words: "And this is the 
condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men 
loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were 
evil. For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither 
cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved. 
But he that doeth truth cometh to the light, that his deeds 
may be made manifest, that they are wrought in God." 
These are the words of Jesus Christ Himself, in which He 
plainly shows that the world is guilty of evil deeds and 
cannot bear the light of the world, and consequently gets 
angry when the light is turned on, and begins to say that 
Jesus has sinned. 

2. This is not only true of the world, it is especially 
true of the Jews. W T e have before us this morning, as 
stated before, the last great conflict of words between 
Jesus and the Jews. We find in these words that the 
Jews are laying a trap for the Savior. We find in these 
words that they call Him names, and finally that they 
pick up stones to hurl at Him. They lay a trap. The 
great feast of Tabernacles was being held in Jerusalem 
— one of the three annual feasts held from the days of 
the Israelites, when they were living under tents, in com- 
memoration of their deliverance from Egypt, and their 
dwelling under the canopy of heaven, they met annually 
in the city of Jerusalem to give thanks to God. It was 
at this time that the Lord Jesus Christ went up also to 



FIFTH SUNDAY IN LENT. 315 

the feast of tabernacles, and it was there that the people 
came with a determination, if possible, to set a trap in 
which they could catch the Son of God and prove that He 
had sinned. 

One of the special traps mentioned in our lesson to- 
day is this, They came with a woman," and said, "This 
woman has been found guilty of adultery — what shall we 
do with her?" The law of Moses demanded that she 
should be stoned, and that gave these men an excuse to 
come into the temple with stones in their hands. They 
did not intend to stone this woman. If they really meant 
to stone the one found guilty of adultery, why did they 
not bring the man along? The law that is found in Le- 
viticus demanded not only that the woman, but the man 
also, should be stoned to death. Why did they not bring 
the man? It was not their intention to kill that woman; 
it was their intention to come there to set a trap for the 
Lord Jesus Christ, to have the stones in their hands ready, 
but not to hurl at the woman, but to hurl at the Son of 
God. The Lord Jesus Christ pays no attention to their 
accusation; He pays less attention to the words than He 
does to the thoughts in the heart. He knew wmat these 
men were after — consequently He began to write in the 
sand, and these men looked down and watched what He 
was writing; He arose and said, "Let him that is without 
sin take the first stone and kill her/' and He kept on 
writing. Tradition tells us that these men slipped up be- 
hind Him and watched what He was writing, and dis- 
covered that He w T as writing the sins that these men had 
been committing, and one by one they went away. If the 
Lord God were to come into this church this morning 
and picture on these walls every sin that you and I have 
committed from the day that we were born until to-day, 
we would rush for the doors — every one of us. That is 
what those men did; but the trap was laid, and the Lord 
Jesus Christ exposed their own thoughts, and then, when 
He arose, He said to the woman, "Where are thine ac- 
cusers?" Nowhere to be found. "Do they not condemn 
thee?" "No." "Then I will not condemn thee. Go, and sin 
no more." The Jews were not there. They had brought 



316 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

the stones, and they had in their breasts hearts that were 
harder than stones, and consequently they came up to 
their Savior again, face to face, and He said to them: 
" Which of you convineeth Me of sin? And if I say the 
truth, why do ye not believe Me? He that is of God heareth 
God's words; ye therefore hear them not, because ye are 
not of God." Then answered the Jews and said unto Him, 
"Say we not well that Thou art a Samaritan, and hast 
a devil ?" They knew they lied. They knew that Jesus 
Christ was not a Samaritan; they knew He did not have 
a devil, but when men get mean there is nothing too mean 
for them to say or do, and consequently they stand up 
before their God and give Him a name of derision, for 
Jerusalem had no respect for, a Samaritan; they gave Him 
a name that would put Him down at the very bottom of 
hell. Thou' hast a devil. 

They not only called Him names, they took the rocks 
they had brought to kill the woman, as far as outward 
appearances would go, and began to lift them up to hurl 
them at Jesus. Why did not Jesus let them hit Him ; 
why did not Jesus let them kill Him with one blow? It 
would not have been such a hard death as that one on 
Calvary's hill — for six long hours He was hanging in 
darkness and light! Why, I ask the question again, did 
not Jesus let one of these stubborn Pharisees hurl -the 
rock that would have ended His life in a moment? Why? 
Because in the 22nd Psalm it was prophesied that His 
hands and His feet should be pierced. You cannot pierce 
a man's hands and feet with rocks. In other words, the 
Word of God being true, His hour had not yet come, and, 
consequently, while they lifted up their hands to hurl the 
stones at the Son of God. they looked, and, behold! He 
was not there. But all this time, by everything they said 
and did, they declared that Jesus sinned. 

3. It is not only true that the Jews claim that Jesus 
sinned, but I am very sorry to say that many professed 
Christians still accuse Jesus of sinning. You may think 
that a strange assertion, but it is true. 

a) This is especially true of every professed Christian 
who in any way supports a Christless religion. There rs 



FIFTH SUNDAY IN LENT. 317 

a saying going all over this land; it lias crept into the 
Church; it has crept into the pulpit; ministers of the 
Gospel, caught in the snare of the devil, instead of sav- 
ing souls, are going about from place to place, preaching 
the damnable doctrine of the Fatherhood of God and the 
brotherhood of man. If that doctrine is true, Jesus lied. If 
that doctrine is true, then the devil is my uncle; if that 
doctrine is true, then the devil and God are brothers! I 
want you to go home and study to-day more carefully 
than you ever did before, a portion of the 8th chapter of 
John. I will read it to you: (38-45) "I speak that which 
I have seen with My Father: and ye do that which ye 
have seen with your father." Two fathers, notice well — 
"They answered and said unto Him, Abraham is our 
father. Jesus saith unto them, 'If ye were Abraham's 
children, ye would do the works of Abraham. But now 
ye seek to kill Me, a man that hath told you the truth, 
which I have heard of God: this did not Abraham. Ye 
do the deeds of your Father.' Then they said to Him, We 
be not born of fornication; we have one Father, even God." 
Notice, my friends, did Jesus believe in the Fatherhood 
of God and the brotherhood of man? " Jesus said unto 
them, If God were your Father, ye would love Me, for 
I proceeded forth and came from God; neither came I of 
Myself, but He sent Me. Why do ye not understand My 
speech? even because ye cannot hear My Word. Ye are of 
your father, the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will 
do." This is not the pastor of the First English Lutheran 
Church saying this, it is the Son of God who says: "Ye 
are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father 
ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and 
abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. 
When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is 
a liar, and the father of it. And because I tell you the 
truth, ye believe Me not." Dear friends, that lie once and 
forever ought to be settled in the Christian Church. If a 
man that rejects my Savior is my brother, and the devil 
is his father, then his father is my uncle. No man can 
get around logic. If the devil is the father of his child, and 
God is my Father, and that child of the devil and I are 



318 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

brothers, then his father and my father are brothers, 
and God and the devil are brothers. Where is the 
logic that can overthrow the argument? Then once 
and forever stop calling yourself a Christian, or make up 
your mind that Jesus told a lie, and if He told a lie, then 
He has sinned, and the question this morning is, Did Jesus 
sin? 

We not only claim that Jesus sinned by putting demon- 
ology in the place of theology, but we also claim He sinned 
by supporting Christless acts of any kind. I said to one 
outside of this city the other day, "How can you with 
your money and with your tongue help support an insti- 
tution that rejects your Savior?" and this was a pro- 
fessed Christian — "Why," he said, "I would not sing for 
them and I w^ould not support them, were it not for the 
fact that they pay me." I said in reply, "Did that justify 
Judas Iscariot to deny his Master, because he got pay?" 
Was Judas justified in betraying Jesus Christ because he 
got fifteen dollars? Does not the very fact that Judas 
Iscariot took the fifteen dollars to betray his Master, make 
the sin the more damnable? All over this country w r e have 
a kind of w r ishy-w T ashy Christianity that thinks it makes 
no difference whether it is a Jewish Church or a Chris- 
tian; thinks it makes no difference whether we pray in 
the name of Christ or not. We know^ that Jesus did not 
sin, but w^e are acting in Christian churches in these days 
as if He did sin, as if He did not know what He was 
talking about. 

b) Again there are members of Christian churches in 
these days that are calling Him a sinner by not support- 
ing the Christian church. There are tw T o ways of making 
this confession — one is to positively support a Christless 
church, or the devil's church, and the other is negatively 
not to support the Christian Church. The Savior says in 
the text, "He that is of God, heareth God's words. Ye 
therefore hear them not because ye are not of God." In 
that verse we find' that the Church of God is to be sup- 
ported; it is to be supported by the gifts of men; it is to 
be supported by their presence and their worship; by their 
making diligent use of the means of grace. We call this 



FIFTH SUNDAY IN LENT. 319 

in German einen Gottesdienst — a God's service. It is not 
only a service in which we come to serve the Master, but 
it is a service in which He comes to serve us, and oh! 
how often God conies here, and where are the people? 
Where are all those whose names are on the church record? 
There are professed Christians that do not see the inside 
of churches for months and years; they want to be called 
Christian — God says they are not. "He that is of God, 
heareth God's words. Ye therefore hear them not, because 
ye are not of God." Look over the record of all churches. 
How many professed Christians there are that do not give 
one little ragged dollar during the year for the support 
of God's kingdom, and yet, when they die, the} 7 would 
like to have two preachers instead of one — no service 
too great in the time of trouble. Look over your own 
church record; ask yourself the question, are you support- 
ing God's house, are you supporting God's church as you 
ought to? How long are you going to depend on these 
old fathers and these mothers that have been fighting the 
battles for years; young men and young women, throw- 
ing your money away for foolishness, nothing for God, what 
is the trouble? Either you are not Christian, or you are 
saying that God sinned when He said, "He that is of God 
heareth God's words; ye therefore hear them not because 
ye are not of God." 

c) How many Christians are there in the present day 
that want a real Christ-like ministry? Am I saying too 
much when I say that there have been complaints all over 
this country about some men preaching a little too plainly, 
and yet there never was a minister of the Gospel in the 
United States that preached a sermon as plain as the one 
Jesus Christ preached in the 8th chapter of John. "Why," 
says some one, "that man will even use the Word 'liar' in 
the pulpit." So did Jesus Christ. "Yet ye have not know^n 
Him: and if I should say I know Him not, I shall be a 
liar like unto you: but I know Him and keep His saying." 
The great trouble is, my friends, we are so used to being 
puffed up, so used to personal glory, that when the real 
truth is told to us, as it ought to be, we think it is sen- 
sational. The truth of Jesus Christ is so strange to some 



320 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

professed Christians that it staggers them when they hear 
it, and I am right here to say this morning that if Jesus 
Christ were to come to earth to-day, and say to all churches 
on earth, "I am ready now to become a pastor of any church 
in this world," I am ready to say there is not one church 
out of ten that would extend a call to Jesus Christ; not 
one church in ten that would want a pastor that knows 
all about their past lives. Jesus Christ would know. There 
isn't one that would want every man that is a liar to be 
called a liar from the pulpit. Jesus Christ would do it. 
It does seem to me, dear friends, the prayer of every true 
Christian to-day should be, "Help our pastor to be plainer 
and bring us the truth so that we cannot get away from 
it." A Christlike ministry wanted is an evidence that Jesus 
Christ told the truth; a Christlike ministry not wanted 
is an evidence that even professed Christians say that Jesus 
Christ sinned. 

II. Although some say He sinned, I call your atten- 
tion to the fact that none know that He sinned. "Which of 
you convinceth Me of sin, and if I say the truth, why do 
ye not believe Me?" Jesus Christ did not say that the people 
could not call Him a devil; that they could not call Him a 
sinner, but, "Why do you not convince Me ; why do you not 
prove it? You know that I do not sin." It is well known, 
my friends, that Jesus Christ never sinned. It is known 
all through heaven; it is known all through hell; and it is 
known in every civilized nation on earth. 

1. Heaven knows that Jesus never sinned. God the 
Father knows it. It was long after Jesus was here on earth 
that He said, "This is My Beloved Son in whom I am well 
pleased." God the Father never was pleased with sinners. 
God the Father knew that His Son was perfect, the Lamb 
of God, that would take the sins of the world away. Jesus 
Christ knew that He had never sinned. "Jesus answered, 
"If I honor Myself, My honor is nothing; it is my Father 
that honoreth Me, of whom ye say that He is your God." 
Yes, God is every man's God, but He is only the Father 
of the Lord Jesus Christ, and His Son's children. There- 
fore the Son of God himself knows that any one who is 
not His child, cannot say, " Our Father, who art in heaven'; 



FIFTH SUNDAY IN LENT. 321 

He knows that He Himself knows that He has never sinned. 
And God the Holy Spirit knows this. What Book is this 
that 1 hold in my band? "Holy men of God spake as they 
were moved by the Holy Ghost." The Holy Ghost, the 
Author of God's Holy Word, knows that Jesus never sinned. 
How could lie call you and me, how gather us together 
to-day, how could He enlighten us, how could He sanctify 
us, how could He keep us, if the Redeemer Himself were 
a sinner? The Holy Spirit's power is this, that he emanates 
from a holy Father and a holy Son, and Himself is the 
Holy Spirit. 

The angels in heaven know that Jesus never sinned. 
They did not leave Him and forsake Him even while here 
on earth. The angels came when Jesus was born; they 
knew His trials in Bethlehem; an angel knew He was 
down in Egypt, and gave the warning when He might come 
home; angels knew that Jesus was suffering in the days 
of temptation, and stood by when He was tempted by the 
devil and ministered unto Him. They knew He did not 
sin. Angels were in the garden of Gethsemane, dark as 
it was, and whispered strength into His ear, when the 
sins of the world were pressing the blood drops out of 
His forehead; angels saw T , with their wings covering the 
sun, that Christ was dying on Calvary. It was an angel 
that came and rolled the rock away to let the perfect Re- 
deemer arise, that had conquered death and hell. All 
heaven knows that Jesus never sinned. 

And so the saints above know He never sinned. They 
talked about their father Abraham, but Abraham was not 
their father. My friends, Abraham was a saint, at home 
with his God, and Abraham knew Christ and looked for 
Him long before He came. Abraham knew that Jesus 
Christ never sinned; Isaac knew He never sinned, and 
Jacob knew He never sinned; and all our dear ones that 
have gone beyond the dark clouds, and past the stars 
and whirling world systems, into the presence of God, 
know that Jesus never sinned. All heaven knows it. 

2. And all hell know^s it. The conflict was going on. 
Satan and Christ stood now face to face. He told the 
children of the devil who their father was. The very powers 



322 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

of hell arose. Who can read this eighth chapter of John 
without noticing hell and heaven brought close together, 
and the prince of hell knew very well that Jesus was 
not a sinner, or he would not have bothered Him. It was 
to bring down the second Adam, perfect, into sin, that he 
was tempting Him and trying Him. The very powers of 
hell all know it. 

The lost all know it. The rich man in hell knows it. 
When he cried up to Lazarus he said, "Go and tell my 
brothers that they may not come to this place of torment." 
Abraham answered back, "They have Moses and the pro- 
phets; if they hear not them, neither will they be per- 
suaded, though one rose from the dead." Yes, my friends, 
they all know that Jesus never sinned. 

3. This is especially true, also, of the civilized nations 
of the earth. There may be some poor heathen to-day who 
never heard of Christ. They do not know whether He 
sinned or did not sin; they are living in total ignorance 
yet; but there is no civilized nation on earth that has 
not heard the story of Christ ; indeed, it was the story of 
Christ that went ahead, that civilized the lands, and I say 
to any man here this morning that does not love Jesus 
Christ, that does not love the Bible, that does not love 
the church, why do you not go where Christ is not known; 
why do you not go where the Bible is not known; why do 
you not go where there are no churches; why do you not 
go among the heathen and let them eat you? Civilized 
lands know that Jesus never sinned. All good Christians 
know this. My Redeemer is a perfect Redeemer ; my Savior 
is a perfect Savior. My soul knows this, and so does yours. 
It takes no argument to let a Christian know that Christ 
is sinless. 

And even the restless moralist knows it. There are 
some people who would love to get to heaven by their own 
goodness, and they are trying their best to live just as 
perfect as they possibly can, all to their own glory, in- 
stead of the glory of God, and who is their model? Is it 
the preacher? No. Is it the church member? No. Who 
is the model for even the moralist? It is Jesus Christ, 



FIFTH SUNDAY IN LENT. 323 

the most ideal man that the world ever heard of. Even 
those who reject His divinity tell us He is the greatest 
man that ever lived, and I say to you this morning that 
if Jesus Christ was not the Son of God, then He was 
not only not the best man, but one of the worst men that 
ever lived, for a man who is not the Son of God to fool 
millions and millions of people to worship him, when he 
is only a man, to claim that he is God when he is not, 
makes him a liar not worthy of being respected by any- 
body. The real truth is this, then, that Jesus Christ is 
either the sinless Son of God, or He was the greatest im- 
postor the world has ever seen. You know, my friends, 
that Jesus Christ is the sinless Christ. The moralist knows 
it, or he would not hold Him up as his own model. 

3. Last of all, the most wicked infidel in the world 
knows that Jesus Christ is, after all, the sinless Savior. 
Now and then we meet w T ith some young man who sur- 
prises us by saying, "I do not believe in churches; I do 
not believe in the Bible; I do not believe in God/' and 
even, sometimes, these young men are held up before us 
as examples and models and we wonder why it is that 
they make such a claim in the light of all former instruc- 
tion. I have tested these young men for twenty-five years. 
I remember in the University at Columbus, Ohio, years ago, 
a young man in the second year of theology surprised the 
professors and all scholars one morning by sajdng, "I am 
an infidel." No conversation nor talk could convince him 
otherwise. Even as a boy I made up my mind that that 
young man's life is rotten. It was not three days after 
that we discovered where he had been spending his nights 
— an ungodly, rotten young man. His conscience hurt 
him, and to answer back to his conscience and to satisfy 
it, he said, "There is no God; there is no hereafter. If 
there is, I will go to hell ; there is no hereafter," and there 
you have the confession of every infidel in the world, Tell 
me there are good infidels in the world — I say in the 
language of Jesus Christ to-day, it is a lie! There never 
was a good infidel on God's earth — never ! There is some- 
thing rotten in the character of every man that does not 



324 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

accept Jesus Christ when he has heard of Him. Just a 
few weeks ago three bandits were caught in the West, and 
the first proclamation of those men was, "We are infidels; 
we do not believe in God." They were tried and found 
guilty of murder in the first degree, and sentenced to 
death. And right here let me emphasize again the loye 
of God that has brought about capital punishment for 
murderers. If those men had been sent to the penitentiary 
for life they would haye been lost foreyer, but when the 
judge read that on such and such a day, and such and 
such an hour, they will haye to leap into eternity, in the 
presence of their God, their eyes were opened. Dying men 
get honest. In the Cincinnati Enquirer of last Monday 
morning we find what one of these men say now : "Standing 
in the shadow of death, I haye come to see the aWfulness 
of the crimes I haye committed, and I have repented from 
the bottom of my heart. Though after my arrest I boasted 
I did not belieye in God, I lied." There you haye the 
truth. He boasted he did not belieye in God, and he says 
he lied, and that is what every other infidel does — he lies, 
and he knows it. Who is the liar? It is a man only twenty- 
three years old, who has killed twenty-three men; that is 
the liar, that is the man who wanted no hereafter; that 
is the man who wanted no Bible and wanted no God's 
Word. I say unto you, my hearers, if you do not loye this 
sermon there is something wrong with you — radically 
wrong — and this is God's eternal truth you are hearing 
this morning. 

In conclusion, I often hear the question asked: How 
did the Savior look? We find pictures of Him in the win- 
dows of our churches; we find Him pictured in books, and 
Ave almost believe we should know Him if we should see 
Him. How did He look? There never was a photograph 
taken except those we find in God's Word, but we may 
know something about His looks from the Bible. We 
do read in the Bible that he was a dear lover of little 
children. 

Dear children, this Savior of whom I speak this morn- 
ing, loves you, for He said: Suffer the little children to 
come unto Me, and forbid them not, for of such is the 



FIFTH SUNDAY IN LENT. 325 

kingdom of heaven. And not only does He love little 
children, but little children love Him. They ran to His 
arms; He put His hands on them and blessed them. 
Do you not know how the Savior looked? He must have 
been beautiful in character. Will you all turn to page 
33 and just for a moment sing about this Savior, and what 
He said of little children? 

(Children's Choir, standing, sing: "Suffer the Children 
to Come Unto Me.") 

Surely, little children, you know that Jesus was beau- 
tiful, or you would not have sung of Him as you have; 
but others here know that He w T as beautiful, You re- 
member that woman, caught in the act of adultery, yet 
the Lord forgave her; and afterwards we find her out of 
whom seven devils had been driven, washing His feet with 
her tears, and drying them with her hair. Every woman 
in the world believes that Jesus was beautiful — and how 
about the men? Is there a real, genuine man here this 
morning — if so, he is a man of God, and if a man of God 
he knows that Jesus was beautiful. And yet, my friends, 
we would have a wrong conception if we were to say He 
looked like a blooming youth. There were some things in 
this world that effaced His beautiful countenance. The 
sins of the world for a period of a third of a century weighed 
heavily in that face; and many a night while out in prayer, 
the grooves in His face became rivers for His tears; He 
looked worn; He looked aged; He looked old; He looked 
more than thirty-three years of age. "Then said the Jews 
unto Him, Thou are not yet fifty years old, and hast Thou 
seen Abraham?' 7 — not yet fifty years old, why did they 
not say "not yet forty" — because He looked as though 
He were nearly fifty years old. 

What made Him look so old? The bad deeds com- 
mitted here on earth by the generations of men. What 
are you and I doing this morning to make His face beau- 
tiful? Oh, we have a picture of Jesus long before He was 
born. We find it in the 53rd chapter of Isaiah: "For 
He shall grow up before him as a tender plant, and as 
a root out of a dry ground: He hath no form nor comeli- 
ness ; and when we shall see Him there is no beauty that we 



320 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

should desire Him. He is despised and rejected of men; a 
man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid, 
as it were, our faces from Him; He was despised, and 
we esteemed Him not." Let us be careful this morning 
that we do not despise the Lamb of God that taketh away 
the sins of the world; let us rather remember that He is 
risen from the dead ; that He has gone home to the Father, 
the beauty of His holiness and His Father's glory shining 
in His face, and may we all remain faithful to Him, that 
we may see Him in His great beauty: we ask it in Jesus^ 
name. Amen. 

PRAYER. 

Lord, our God, we ask Thy divine blessing upon the message of the 
morning; we thank Thee for a sinless Savior who was able to meet Satan 
with all his hosts ; who challenged all the powers of hell to convince Him 
of sin, and yet it has never been found in heaven, nor in hell, nor on earth 
that He has sinned; we thank Thee, O God, that we, who are full of sin 
by nature, can come to One who is sinless, and find that in His heart there 
is a love that pours itself out in death that we might all live. We ask Thy 
divine blessing this morning upon every officer of this church ; we ask it 
upon all the teachers and the officers of our Sunday-school; we ask it upon 
the dear children who this morning have sung so beautifully to Thy glory ; 
and we pray Thee to bless all the members of this church, and all who may 
be here this morning in Thine house; give them a rich blessing, and help us 
that we may this afternoon, and in the afternoon of life, dwell upon the 
great Truth which Thou hast revealed to us in this morning's message, and 
help us to understand the difference between the father of the ungodly and 
the Father of the children of Jesus ; help us to understand the difference be- 
tween being a child of God and a child of the devil ; help us to understand 
the difference between going on the broad way that leads to destruction, 
and the narrow way which leadeth unto life ; help us to know the right way, 
hearing the word, "I am the Way, the Truth and the Life, and no man cometh 
to the Father but by Me." While we are in this way, O God, help us to 
sing prayerfully that song which has' every petition in it necessary for body 
and soul : 

Our Father, who art in heaven ; Hallowed be Thy name ; Thy kingdom 
come; Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our 
daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses as we -forgive those who trespass 
against us. Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil, for Thine 
is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory forever and ever. Amen. 






PALM SUNDAY. 



THE SCARLET THREAD. 



Joshua 2 : IS. 

BEHOLD, when we come into the land, thou shalt bind this line of scar- 
let thread in the window which thou didst let us down by : and thou 
shalt bring thy father, and thy mother, and thy brethren, and all thy 
father's household, home unto thee. 

Sanctify us, O Lord, through Thy Truth; 
Thy Word is Truth. Amen. 



Beloved Members of the First Lutheran Church and Friends: 
On this day, Palm Sunday, thousands and thousands of 
young men and women in all parts of the world are bowing 
down before the altar of God, and vowing to be faithful to 
Him until death, by the act of confirmation. When the 
Church of God selected these texts for special Sundays, it 
was done in a country where no child grew up as a heathen. 
You cannot find in the old German Lutheran countries of 
Europe that any boy or girl grows up in a family, not a 
Christian. It is only in this land of ours, where we have 
lost many a treasure that we once had, that we have heathen 
in Christian homes. In this land it is necessary, if the 
Church of God does her duty, not only to confirm once a 
year, but to confirm just as often as possible. A soul is 
just as precious in July as it is in April; just as precious 
one Sunday as the other; but it is no mistake, even in this 
country, on this day, to bring together those who have been 
confirmed, and address a special message to them ; and may 
God help that all who have come into this church under my 
humble ministry, may be strengthened to-day for the battles 
of the future, and come out yet more fully on the side of 

327 



328 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

God. On this Sunday the Church of the Eeformat4on is 
considering the riding of the Great King of Heaven into 
Jerusalem, unto Zion, received by the proclamation of the 
children as well as the adults. While I do not wish to take 
you away from Calvary, as we are standing close by the 
cross to-day, I will lead you back to another little town not 
far from Jerusalem, where we shall also find a scarlet thread. 
Let me then dwell upon this thought to-day, 



THE SCARLET THREAD. 



I will show you 

I. Its length. 
II. Its strength. 



I. You remember the story of Rahab on the walls of 
Jericho, — a harlot living on the top of that wall, visited by 
two spies; the children of Israel were just ready to enter 
the land of Canaan and sent these spies to observe the con- 
ditions ahead. These two spies were received by this woman ; 
the discovery was made by the king and the people in the 
city; the moment was coming to kill the spies, when she 
hid them on the top of her roof and covered them with flax 
until the enemy had gone, and then, with a cord, let them 
down off of the wall, and they escaped to liberty; and it 
was after they had escaped from that wall that they looked 
back, and lo and behold ! the cord was red ; it was a scarlet 
thread, and these two spies gave her notice that if she would 
let that scarlet thread hang out over the wall when they 
came back they would spare her and her family ; — all should 
be saved by the scarlet thread. What was its length? It 
reached from that house of danger to the land of safety. 

As I look over the history of my Lord and Savior, Jesus 
Christ, I find a scarlet thread running throughout the Word 
of God; running from Eden to the resurrection; running 
from infancy to death; running from eternal death to eternal 
life. 

1. It is well to notice how this Book is tied together 
with the scarlet thread. I have spoken to you before of the 
serpent's trail going over all these pages from the garden of 



PALM SUNDAY. 3U!) 

Eden to the Book of Revelation; but do not fail to notice 
that by the side of the serpent's trail, there runs a red streak 
of blood — the prophetic blood, as well as the real blood of 
Jesus Christ. No sooner had sin come into the world than 
the Lord God taught our first parents to offer sacrifice. The 
very skins that Adam and Eve wore were more than likely 
taken off of the animals that were offered to the Lord God 
as a sacrifice for sins. Cain and Abel offered sacrifice, and 
one reason why Cain's sacrifice was never accepted of the 
Lord was because he failed to have the faith, and the reason 
he failed to have the faith was because all sacrifices for sin 
required blood, and he brought fruit instead of blood ; apples 
have no blood, and therefore cannot be used for sacrifice. 
Cain, therefore, committed his first great sin against God, 
by failing to hold to the scarlet thread. 

That same scarlet thread runs throughout the book of 
Genesis; that same scarlet thread is found on Mt. Moriah, 
when Abraham leads his son Isaac to offer sacrifice. Isaac 
himself was a type of Jesus Christ; he was an only son, 
as Jesus was; he bore the wood as Christ bore the cross; 
he went up on Mt. Moriah as Jesus did ; he was there to offer 
his life as Jesus did; and the knife was already lifted to 
strike the boy, according to the command of God, when lo 
and behold! an angel from heaven revealed the fact that 
there is blood in yonder lamb, in yonder bush, and that this 
blood is only a type of the blood of the Lamb of God that 
taketh away the sins of the world. This whole book of 
Leviticus is full of the offering of sacrifices. The prophets 
from one end to the other all tell that a Savior is coming 
who shall offer His life for the sins of the world. Then we 
come on down to the New Testament, and what do we find 
the evangelists telling us, but of the life of Jesus Christ who 
came into the world, as the prophets had said, and who 
laid down His life on Calvary, slept in the borrowed grave, 
arose again, ascended into heaven, and promised the coming 
of the Holy Spirit? Go on over to the Acts of the Apostles. 
Observe that Luke in writing to Theophilus the Acts of the 
Apostles calls attention to the fact that these things hap- 
pened after the passion of Jesus Christ, after the shedding 
of the blood, and the Acts of the Apostles are sermons of 



330 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

the acts in the name of Him who died and rose again. When 
we go through the epistles of Paul, they are all written with 
the blood of the Lamb, and when we come back to the Book 
of Revelations, it is the book of the Lamb of God, of Him 
who loved us and laid down His life for us. So you see, 
my friends, that the Bible has the scarlet thread running 
from Genesis to Kevelation. 

2. It is not only true that this thread is as long as the 
Bible, but it is also as long as the distance from Eden to 
the Resurrection. As I have already said, the first sacrifice 
was offered at the gate of the garden. Adam and Eve started 
the scarlet thread ; the sons, Cain and Abel, also kept it up. 
This scarlet thread, you will find, goes from the garden of 
Eden on down to the Pyramids of Egypt ; from the Pyramids 
of Egypt over to the mountains of Arabia ; from Arabia up 
to Solomon's temple; from Solomon's temple on over to Mt. 
Carmel; from Mt. Carmel to the Cross of Calvary; from 
the Cross of Calvary to the church steeple of Wittenberg; 
and from Wittenberg Church down to all the missionary 
posts in the world. Wherever you look, like a network 
of wire in this country, you will find the scarlet thread. 
What was. it down in Egypt, when the blood was put over 
the door posts that the first born might live? What was it 
but the scarlet thread when the Passover was first celebrated 
with the perfect lamb? What was it but the scarlet thread 
when Moses put up the pole, and on that pole a brazen ser- 
pent, saying, Look unto that serpent and thou shalt live? 
Jesus said, As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, 
so shall the Son of man be lifted up. Do you not see the 
scarlet thread in that wilderness? You find this scarlet 
thread over there at the temple that Solomon built? One 
hundred and twenty thousand sheep were offered at the dedi- 
cation of the temple ; twenty-two thousand oxen were offered. 
Oh! how the blood must have flown at the dedication. It 
was not the blood of the animals that saved the world, but 
it was the blood of the animals that reminded the people of 
the scarlet thread that should save the world. Look at Mt. 
Carmel. There stands that old prophet Elijah in the pres- 
ence of eight hundred and fifty false preachers, four hundred 
of one sect and four hundred and fifty of the other. A test 



PALM SUNDAY. 331 

was given that day, a test from on high, a test by fire, and 
the fire consumed the ottering of Elijah, when the blood 
shed — the line of scarlet was still there. And then look 
at Calvary! Shall we, on tins Sunday before Good Friday, 
forget how Jesus bore the sins of the world on the cross? 
Shall we forget that scene in Gethsemane where the bloody 
sweat drops fell into the dust? Shall we forget that whip- 
ping, that scourging, that crown of thorns before Pontius 
Pilate? Shall we forget those nails that went piercing 
through His hands and feet? Shall we forget that blood 
that came down from the thorny crown? Shall we forget 
that knife that was intended to cut through that scarlet 
thread, but only placed it, mixed with water, in the breast 
of Jesus? 

Shall we forget : "O sacred Head, now wounded, 

With grief and shame weighed down ! 
Xow scornfully surrounded 
With thorns, Thine only crown !" 

Shall we forget : "Alas, and did my Savior bleed 
And did my Savior die : 
Would He devote that sacred head 
For such a worm as I?" 

Shall we forget: "Rock of Ages, cleft for me, 

Let me hide myself in Thee : 

Let the water and the blood 

From Thy riven side that flowed 

Be of sin a perfect cure ; 

Save me, Lord, and make me pure."? 

On that cross on Calvary's hill hangs the scarlet thread,. 
All through the Dark Ages and the Middle Ages you find the 
scarlet thread. Let us not for a single moment imagine that 
the first five hundred years of the Dark Ages, and the last 
five hundred, making up the Middle Ages, were without 
Christianity in the world. Let us not imagine there was 
a time when there was no Church. In those dark ages there 
were men and women who with candles in caves worshiped 
the true and living God, and found their way out by the 
scarlet thread. In that library at Erfurt, where Dr. Luther 
discovered the Bible chained, he found not only a chain, but 



332 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

the scarlet thread, and it was that scarlet thread that led 
him to Rome, and led him back to the Church at Wittenberg, 
and with hammer in hand, and ninety-five theses ready to 
nail on that door, he called the attention of the world to 
the fact that the scarlet thread is still in Europe. And 
that scarlet thread from the days of the Reformation until 
to-day has been carried out on land and sea by self-sacrific- 
ing missionaries to every heathen land, and the false gods 
have fallen, and they have been pulled down by man with 
the scarlet thread. And that same scarlet thread is with 
us to-day. In all lands there are some things that the Chris- 
tian churches differ on, but there is one thing to which we 
all hold : all hold to the scarlet thread. The Roman Catho- 
lic may teach his people to worship saints, and to worship 
pictures, and carved images, during their days of health and 
strength, but when the Roman Catholic is dying, the priest 
walks up to him and holds up to him no saint, but only the 
crucifix, to remind him of the fact that his soul's salvation 
after all depends not on what man does, but on the scarlet 
thread. And the scarlet thread is going on down through 
the ages, and the more enlightened people become, the more 
they are clinging to Christ and Him crucified, and on the 
Resurrection morning, when He shall come in the clouds, 
with all His holy angels, He will have hands wounded that 
started the scarlet thread. 

3. And this scarlet thread runs not only down through 
the ages, but it is long enough to run right down along the 
path of your own life. In that parable of the laborer, where 
the invitation is given in the first hour, and in the third, 
and in the sixth, and in the ninth and in the eleventh hour, 
we find the scarlet thread running right on down through 
life. When the little babe is born, the moment that it comes 
into this world, there is the invitation given, Suffer the little 
children to come unto Me, and forbid them not, for of such 
is the kingdom of heaven, — and that invitation comes from 
the scarlet thread. 

When that little child is growing up, there is the admoni- 
tion, "Train up a child in the way he should go : and when 
he is old he will not depart from it." He is to be trained 



PALM SUNDAY. :>:*>:> 

along the line of the scarlet thread. The Lord Jesus Christ 
took the child up in His arms and blessed it, and said, "He 
that offendeth one of these little ones which believe in Me, 
it were better for him that a mill stone were hanged about 
his neck and he were drowned in the depths of the sea." In 
other words, any father and mother who will not put the 
scarlet thread around the hearts and souls of their children, 
had better have a rock tied to their necks to sink them into 
the sea, says Jesus. 

The scarlet thread comes to you. "Search the Scriptures, 
for in them ye think ye have eternal life, and they are they 
which testify of Me." What do they testify? They testify 
of the scarlet threap. Near the middle part of life men 
and women establish homes. God pity the home that has 
not Christ in it; God pity the young married couple that 
does not know Jesus yet ! They should establish their home 
on the Kock of Ages and have the scarlet thread run through 
their windows. 

This scarlet thread should go on down the hillside of 
life, and down along old age, and into the eleventh hour. 
Fathers and mothers, cling to the scarlet thread ! 

4. It not only runs all the way down through life, but 
it is long enough to reach from eternal death to eternal life. 
That scarlet thread started up in a harlot's house on the 
walls of Jericho, but the spies took hold of that scarlet thread 
and came down to land perfectly safe, with liberty and life, 
and they went back and reported to Israel, and all Israel 
came ; not only all Israel came, but the whole household on 
top of that wall was saved by the same scarlet thread. And 
so you discover, my friends, that a people born in sin, with- 
out being regenerated, are up on that wall, and there is a 
scarlet thread that reaches from them to salvation; and so 
by this thread we can come from death to life; we can 
climb from hell to heaven, — it is the scarlet thread that 
leads us to the throne of God. 

II. Having observed, to a certain extent, the length of 
this cord, we will notice its strength. 

Behold, when we come into the land, thou shalt bind this 
line of scarlet thread in the window which thou didst let 



331 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

us down by : and thou shalt bring thy father, and thy mother, 
and thy brethren, and all thy father's household home unto 
thee. 

1. We find first of all, then, that this scarlet thread is 
strong enough to bear the worst sinner. As said before, 
Rahab was a harlot ; she was one of the lowest of all women ; 
at the same time, there was a period in her life when she 
heard of the children of God across the Jordan; there was 
a period in her life when she heard there was a God who 
divided the Ked Sea and saved Israel from the hands of 
the Egyptians; there was a period in her life when she dis- 
covered that a life of sin is no pleasure; that a life of sin 
is a terrible thing with an immortal soul, and consequently 
she made up her mind that she was going to come out on 
the side of God; that she Avas going to be a good woman, 
God helping her, and she established her home up on the 
wall where she might be the first to see Israel and hear of 
Israel's God ; and the result was that not only did she save 
the life of the spies, but she with that red cord heard the 
truth that saved her own soul. In reading the eleventh 
chapter of Hebrews, where the apostle Paul puts up a large 
arch describing the great deeds done by faith, he does not 
fail to mention such men as Enoch, and Abraham, and Jacob, 
and Joseph, but among them he does not fail to mention 
Rahab. Heb. 11 : 30-31. a By faith the walls of Jericho fell 
down, after they were compassed about seven days. By 
faith the harlot Rahab perished not with them that believed 
not, when she had received the spies with peace." Here was 
a weak, low, lewd woman, and the scarlet thread was strong 
enough to save her. Some people may say this is dangerous 
preaching, that it is a dangerous Gospel; it will only urge 
people to go on and be wicked, since they will be saved at 
last. While it is true that the Gospel of Jesus Christ is an 
asylum for the greatest sinner to run to, it is more than an 
asylum; it is a hospital. While people may come to this 
scarlet thread with rotten characters, they go away healed 
— well — saved ! And what a comfort this scarlet thread 
must be to you and me. If it were a fact that Jesus Christ 
could not save great sinners, what would become of you? 
If it were a fact that Jesus Christ could not save great 



PALM SUNDAY. 335 

sinners, your pastor would be damned. If it were a fact 
that Jesus Christ could not save great sinners, there would 
not be a man saved on earth. This thing of thinking that 
other people are great sinners, and we are not, is a mistake. 
There is no man on earth that is not a great sinner, and 
thanks be to God ! the scarlet thread will bear a Rahab ; the 
scarlet thread will lift up a thief. While wicked men were 
trying to cut the scarlet thread on Calvary's hill, a thief took 
hold of it and was lifted into heaven! 

2. This scarlet thread is not only strong enough to bear 
the greatest sinner, but it is strong enough to bear a whole 
family, no difference how large it is. This wicked woman 
has still a father and a mother living ; she has still brothers 
and sisters living, and, like a wicked woman, she has her 
servants. "Keep the cord you have saved us by, the scarlet 
thread, and when we come and surround the city the seventh 
time, and at a great shout the walls fall, let the scarlet 
cord hang out, and we will save your whole family" — and 
the scarlet thread was the thing that saved the whole family. 
Israel crossed the Jordan on dry land, and when they came 
to the city of Jericho, they began to blow their trumpets of 
rams horns, and carried the ark of the covenant around the 
first day, and walked around the city the second day; they 
walked around the third day; they walked around the 
fourth day, and then the fifth, and then the sixth, and on 
the seventh day they went around that same wall seven times, 
and God said, the seventh time you go around, give a shout, 
and the walls will fall over. Reason would have said, that 
is a foolish story; reason would have said, How can those 
people come across the river? The waters are deep. Rea- 
son would have said, What can those people do with these 
stone walls? Reason would have said, How can you blow 
these walls down with your ram's horns? Reason would 
have said, How can you blow it down with a loud shout out 
of the mouths of men? But when God speaks He means it, 
and the spies told that woman, Hang out the scarlet thread 
and we will know where your house is; have your father 
there and have your mother there; have your servants and 
your brothers and your sisters there, and when the people 
shout, and the walls fall, and the city goes down, and every 



33G THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

soldier goes straight across the wall, there is only one part 
of that wall will stand, and it will stand, held up by a scarlet 
thread. Wonderful thread of God! It saved the family. 

Oh, dear friends, look around in your homes to-day. Is 
it true that -there is one of your family not saved? There is 
only one hope, there is only one thing that ever will help, — 
it is the scarlet thread. Pray God that you may put that 
scarlet thread into the hands of your son, and into the hands 
of your wife, and into the hands of your mother, and into 
the hands of all your servants. I would be the unhappiest 
man on earth if I had a member of my family not a Christian ; 
I could never stand it to have one to work for me who was 
not a Christian. Oh, may we pray to the throne of God 
to-day, that the scarlet thread that is able to bear whole 
families, may bear all of our families! 

3. It is not only strong enough to bear the greatest 
sinner and whole families, but it is also able to draio people 
of God away from the ivieked world. It must have been a 
terrible struggle for this woman to come out from her people 
in that city of Jericho. What sacrifices she must have made, 
but we learn that when she became a Christian, she once 
and forever severed her connection from ungodly people. 
Do you know why it is that so many Christians of the pres- 
ent day are so weak and undecided? It is because they 
never come to that point in life where they can say, Now, 
wicked world, you have got to go with me, or farewell for- 
ever! The scarlet thread is the only thing that can pull 
us away from the wicked world. No oratory can do it; no 
pleading can do it ; no human agency will do it. The world 
is worldly and will stay Avorldly; worldly people in the 
church are worldly and they will act worldly and be worldly 
until pulled by the scarlet thread. Nothing in the world 
but the scarlet thread can ever pull Christians away from 
the wicked Avorld, and if you are to-day still mixed up with 
the wicked world, by your associations, whatever they may 
be, remember I cannot help you out ; remember that no man 
on earth can help you out ; remember that there is absolutely 
nothing but the scarlet thread, — it is stronger than earth — 
it is stronger than stone walls. Jericho had to fall, but the 
scarlet thread held the wall up, and the scarlet thread is 



PALM SUNDAY. '>->< 

able to take vou and me and hold us up when otherwise we 
should fall. 

4. It is strong enough not only to lead Christians out 
of the world, but it is strong enough to draw Christians 
together. We are told in this same connection that after 
the walls had fallen, and Rahab and her family were saved 
by the scarlet thread, they joined Israel; and not only joined 
Israel, but actually this fallen woman became one of the 
lineage from which Jesus was born. Did you ever stop to 
think that that harlot of Jericho, became the mother of the 
lineage of Mary; that while she held a cord down from that 
wall, at first just called a cord, afterwards notice that it 
was red, held in her veins another cord, a cord that was hold- 
ing Jesus in it? It. seems to me that the grace of God over- 
whelms us when we think of the fact that a Ruth and a 
Rahab should enter into the lineage from which Jesus was 
born — but they did. They joined themselves to God's peo- 
ple, and it was the scarlet thread that held them together.. 

We have met here together to-day as confirmed and bap- 
tized members of the First Lutheran Church. Many of you 
who sit before me to-day have acknowledged God as your 
only Savior, and have promised to be faithful to Him until 
death. Some of you have made this promise nearly a year 
ago; some very recently. As I look over this audience to- 
day, I see so many faces that have come together and have 
been held together, by what? By the scarlet thread! What 
is it that has brought you into the First Lutheran Church, 
but this scarlet thread? What is it that is bringing the peo- 
ple to this house of God, but the scarlet thread? They tell 
us at times to talk upon political questions ; to read philoso- 
phical essays, to have this and that to draw the- people. Dear 
friends, I have been preaching the Gospel for eighteen years, 
and I have never preached to empty pews, and I want to 
tell you this, it is not because of any special intelligence of 
the man, not because of any special gift of mine, not be- 
cause I am anything but a poor sinner, saved by the scarlet 
thread, but I will tell you what it is : it is the scarlet thread 
that helps immortal souls ; it is the scarlet thread that holds 
you together, and will hold you together when everything 
else fails. Those stone walls crumbled to dust, but the 



338 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

scarlet thread hanging there was as red as ever, and it is 
as red to-day as it ever was; it never will go down; that 
is what it is. Spurgeon preached for twenty-five years in 
London and he never preached to less than five thousand 
people; through sunshine or rain, what brought them to- 
gether? He says himself: "I have not brought them to- 
gether, but I have held up before the people in the place of 
Spurgeon, Christ and Him crucified." The scarlet thread 
is what holds people together. 

Conclusion: How were these spies saved by the scarlet 
thread? How were Eahab and her family saved? They 
took hold of it and let themselves down by it. And so, dear 
friends, this scarlet thread of the cross of Calvary will save 
no man if he does not take hold of it by faith. 

1. When we do take hold of this scarlet thread, we 
should take hold of it with saving faith. The old catechism 
tells us that faith consists of knowledge, of assent, and of 
confidence. A man may know there is a Savior, and be 
lost ; that does not help. A man may know that the Savior 
can save, and be lost; that does not help. The thing that 
helps is to take hold and be saved. A man may see a vessel 
out in the sea while he is drowning, but that does not save 
his life. He may also give assent and acknowledge that that 
vessel would be able to carry him ; that does not save him. 
The only thing that will save him is for him to get on the 
vessel and be saved. You may know that there is a Savior, 
and be lost; you may know that Jesus can save, and be 
lost ; but believe on Him and you cannot be lost. Then take 
hold with a saving faith. 

2. And not only with a saving faith, but with a singular 
faith. The king of Jericho and his army of great men were 
within the walls of that city, but there was a time when 
Rahab stood alone. When the spies escaped for their lives, 
nobody was there but Rahab. She not only had a faith, but 
she had a singular faith. It is so easy to believe what every- 
body believes ; it is so easy to say 'Yes' when everybody says 
*Yes' ; but oh, let us pray God for a faith that will help us 
to stand, if we stand all alone. And that is the trouble 
in these days. If one-half of this church should say this 

: Let us get rid of our pastor," the other half would 



PALM SUNDAY. 339 

say, "All right." If a few people say a certain thing, and 
are looked upon as leaders, the other people forget to think, 
and say, Yes. Let ns have a faith that means something and 
stands for something. Do not be like a dead fish .in the 
stream, that always goes with the water; be a live fish and 
swim against the stream. Too many dead fish in the Church 
these days, they are anything and everything because others 
are. God's truth is too plain to have a thousand opinions 
about doctrine. Let us find out what God teaches, and 
believe it, and tell the people. I expect to get the respect 
of every citizen in this city, not by siding in with every- 
body, but by being a man — a man of God, and that is 
what I want you all to be. Dear young people, who have 
come into the Church of God, be something and stand for 
it, and dare to be singular, as Rahab was. 

3. Dare to make a sacrifice. Rahab lost her home; 
she lost all her former wicked friends, but her soul was 
saved; she was willing to make the sacrifice. That is the 
kind of faith to have. There are people who know they 
are in the wrong place, but because they have put a little 
money there, they stay in it. Get rid of your unjust money. 
You cannot afford to hold to anything if it is wrong. There 
are people who join the big church because it does not cost 
anything. Get rid of that little idea of Christianity. For 
my part, I want to belong somewhere where it does cost 
something. For my part, I Avant to do something for the 
scarlet thread that did so much for me. Like Rahab of old, 
let us be willing to make sacrifices to hold to, the scarlet 
thread. 

4. And, last of all, let us hold fast to this thread with 
a sanctifying faith. As said before, Rahab, though at one 
time a harlot, turned out to become one of the lineage 
of Jesus Christ. She became as good a woman as ever lived. 
I would not be ashamed to-day to have it known that a 
woman like Christian Rahab was my mother, and yet at 
one time she was a harlot. She had a sanctifying faith. 
No difference, my friends, what mistakes people have made 
in the past, if they have repented, look on them as though 
they never did a wrong; if they have repented and have a 
strong faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and are trying to do 



340 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

all they c^n to make amends for the past, help lift them up, 
and honor them as much as you possibly can. She had a 
sanctifying faith ; she was a pure-hearted woman ; forgiven 
of all her sins, she went out in the service of her God and 
Master, and at last, as stated before, when the great arch 
was put up for the conquering ones by faith, among the 
names of such great men as Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, 
was the name of Rahab. And on that last great day, when 
we stand before God we shall be surprised to find great the 
names of some on earth that we thought were so little ; and 
we shall be surprised not to find the names of others at all 
that we thought were so great. God knows true greatness, 
and it consists in this, that we are faithful to the scarlet 
thread, and hold fast until death. 

"Christian, seek not yet repose ; 

Cast thy dream of ease away; 
Thou art in the midst of foes ; 

Therefore watch and pray. 

"Gird thy heavenly armor on ; 

Wear it night and day, 
Near thee lurks the evil one ; 

Therefore watch and pray. 

"Listen to the sorrowing Lord; 

Whom thou lovest, Him obey ; N 

It is He who speaks the word — 

Therefore watch and pray. 

' "'Twas in watching and in prayer 
Holy men of olden day 
Won the palms and crowns they wear — 
Therefore watch and pray. 

"Watch for thou thy guard must keep; 

Pray, for God must speed the way ; 
Narrow is the road and steep, 

Therefore watch and pray." — Amen. 






EASTER. 



RESURRECTION ROCKS. 



Mark 16 : 1-8. 



H 



ii \ JND when the Sabbath was past, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the 
mother of James, and Salome, had brought sweet spices, that they 
might come and anoint Him. And very early in the morning the 
first day of the week, they came unto the sepulchre at the rising of the sun. 
And they said among themselves, Who shall roll us away the stone from the 
door of the sepulchre? And when they looked, they saw that the stone 
was rolled away ; for it was very great. And entering into the sepulchre, 
they saw a young man sitting on the right side, clothed with a long white 
garment ; and they were frightened. And he said unto them, Be not afright- 
ened : ye seek Jesus of Nazareth, which was crucified : He is risen ; He is 
not here. Behold the place where they laid Him. But go your way, tell 
His disciples, and Peter, that He goeth before you into Galilee : there shall 
ye see Him, as He said unto you. And they went out quickly, and fled from 
the sepulchre, for they trembled and were amazed : neither said they any- 
thing to any man ; for they were afraid." 

Sanctify us, O Lord, through Thy Truth; 
Thy Word is Truth. Amen. 



Dearly Beloved in Christ: — 

Jesus, the crucified Lord, is risen from the dead! What 
a change from that dark afternoon, when he was hanging 
on the cross! Truly it was dark when the Son of God was 
dying; it was dark in the homes of the disciples and of the 
mother that night, when they remembered that Jesus was 
no more living; and it was dark yet that morning when 
Mary arose, and these other good women, and started with 
their sweet spices to anoint their Master; but the dawn 
was coming; the angels of God had flashed down from 
heaven like a lightning stroke, and had rolled the rock 
away, and out burst the Light of the World! The rock 

341 



342 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

was rolled away, and the Son of God arose. These women 
said, Who shall roll us away the rock? and lo! when they 
came there, it was rolled away. How often you and I 
have bothered ourselves about rocks to be rolled away, 
•when the fact is they were already rolled away. Let us 
sing this morning, with the poet: 

"Angel, roll the rock away ; 
Death, yield up thy mighty prey; 
See, He rises from the tomb, 
Glowing in immortal bloom. 

" Tis the Savior ! angels raise 
Fame's eternal trump of praise ; 
Let the World's remotest bound 
Hear the joy-inspiring sound. 

"Heav'n displays its portals wide; 
Glorious Hero ; through them ride : 
King of glory ! mount Thy throne, 
Thy great Father's and Thine own. 

"Host of heav'n, seraphic fires ! 
Raptured, sweep your sounding lyres ; 
Sons of men! in humble strain 
Sing your mighty Savior's reign. 

"Ev'ry note with wonder swell; 
Sin o'erthrown, and captive hell 
Where is now, O death ! thy sting ? 
Where thy terrors, vanquished king?" 

Let me invite your attention this morning a few moments to 

RESURRECTION ROCKS. 

I. Some are to he rolled away. 
II. Some have been rolled aivay. 

I. And they said among themselves, "Who shall roll 
us away the stone from the door of the sepulchre? Nearly 
two thousand years have passed since those good women 
asked that question, and there are many Christians to-day 
yet, as they look out into the future and into the present, 
who see stones that need to be rolled away: and where are 



EASTER. 343 

these stones? They are found in the home; they are found 
in the Church; and they are found in the world. 

1. In the home, 1 find this morning a rock that needs 
to be rolled away, and that rock is late sleeping. The 
Lord Jesus Christ had prophesied that He should sleep in 
the bowels of the earth three days, and the third day He 
would rise again. He was crucified on Good Friday; the 
afternoon hours had already come, and the evening was 
here when two of His disciples came and took His body 
and laid it to rest in the late hours of the afternoon; and 
there He slept on the old Sabbath day; early in the morn- 
ing these women arose to go and bring spices to their dead 
Savior, and, lo and behold! He w r as up early. Just what 
hour Jesus rose from the dead we do not know, but I be- 
lieve that it was very soon after twelve o'clock at night. 
The Lord our God went to bed in His borrowed grave late 
on Friday evening; to fulfill His Word, He had to stay 
there until Sunday morning; but when the angel came and 
rolled the rock away, Jesus Christ had already been dowm 
to the gates of hell; and these women came while it was 
yet dark, as one of the evangelists tells us, and lo, the 
angel was sitting upon the rock. The Lord had risen! It 
does seem to me that the more we look into the great story 
of Easter the more we should expect greater activity. 

The custom we have in the present day of sleeping 
longer on Sunday morning than other mornings is not in 
harmony with Easter. There is no day in all the week 
more important than Sunday morning. It is the day when 
we ought to be wide awake ; it is the day when we ought to 
get up early, and I hope the time will come when every 
home will remember every Sunday morning: This is the 
morning that Jesus rose from the grave; this is the morn- 
ing that He got up somewhere between twelve o'clock at 
night and very early in the morning. 

Not only do I find that this rock of long sleeping should 
be rolled away, but there is another rock that ought to be 
rolled away in the home, and that is Sunday inactivity. 
The old Sabbath required rest; Sunday morning requires 
activity. Look for a few moments at the activity on that 
first Easter morning. Just what hour I do not know, but 



344 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

the Lord Jesus Christ arose early. He did not sit down on 
the stone; He did not stay in that grave; but He went 
down, as Peter tells us, to the spirits in prison — to the 
people who died in the days of Noah — went down to the 
gates of hell, and proclaimed Himself conquerer, and came 
back. The angel was busy that day — came from heaven 
and rolled the rock away and sat down on it, to announce 
the news to those who came. The Christian women were 
busy that morning, not waiting until eight or nine o'clock, 
but before the sun was up they ran out a mile to the grave 
of Jesus. The two young men who went out to Emmaus 
were busy that day, walking seven and a half miles, part of 
the time with the Lord Jesus Christ. Christ was busy all 
day, for He went in that evening to eat His supper, and 
with His wounded hands and wounded breast showed to 
the disciples that this is Jesus; and it was not long after 
that until He was back again in Jerusalem, and there gave 
the office of the keys to His disciples. Oh, what a busy 
Christ; what busy angels; what busy disciples! Look at 
Peter and John going to that grave: they did not walk 
slowly, but they tell us that John outran Peter; both ran 
as fast as they could, in perfect harmony with Easter 
morning. Sunday does not mean inactivity; it means 
work. As the sun rises in the East, so the Sun of Glory 
should rise in our hearts. The apostle Paul, when he 
wrote to the Romans, said: "We are buried with Christ by 
baptism into death, that like as He was raised from the 
dead by the glory of the Father, so we should walk in new- 
ness of life" — not sit down, but walk — be busy. May the 
time soon come when every one in the home will consider it 
a day of activity. What good this congregation could do, 
if this afternoon every one would start out after a Sunday 
school scholar; start out after a catechetical scholar; start 
out to bring some one who has drifted away from the means 
of grace, back to God again! What a work we could do, 
and this is in perfect harmony with the angels; in perfect 
harmony with the mother of Jesus; in perfect harmony 
with the apostles; in perfect harmony with the Son of God. 
Oh! that this stone were rolled away, of Sunday inactivity. 
We have also in our homes another rock that ought to 



EASTER. 345 

be rolled away, and that is the rock of infidelic men. You 
will notice in the lesson that I have just read that the 
women came early in the morning, to bring- spices to their 
Savior. Woman was the first to fall, and consequently 
she wants to be the first to try to make good her fall. No 
woman ever spit in her Savior's face; no woman ever 
slapped His face; no woman ever pushed the crown of 
thorns down on His head; but where are the men, and 
what do they do? Where were the men on that Easter 
morning? When Mary Magdalene ran back from the 
grave and told the disciples that Jesus was risen from the 
dead, they did not believe it. Not one of them believed 
these great truths, and I find in the present day that there 
are so many homes that have men in them that are hin- 
dering the Church of God and the spreading of her king- 
dom; there are so many men in our homes who seem to 
think the Church is good enough for children; that it is 
good enough for mother ; that it is good enough for women ; 
but we men, we do not need to go to the house of God, and 
the great secret of the w^hole matter is that those men still 
have in their hearts the old rock of unbelief; those men 
still have within them a stone that needs to be rolled away. 
If wise men came from the East to Jerusalem to hunt the 
Savior; if men like Paul, gifted in language and in all the 
arts of his day, will give his life for Christ and Him cruci- 
fied; if such great men as Dr. Luther and Melanchthon, 
and the Church fathers, will give their lives for the Gospel 
of Christ; if the best men (I make no exception to this 
proposition) in the United States to-day are all Christians, 
working like a John Wanamaker, working like that man — 
that great old man in London — Mr. Gladstone, working 
like Emperor William, working like all true men, then, my 
friends, it is time that those who have their little hard and 
infidelic hearts in the home should have them rolled away. 
This is Easter morning — whatever your lives have been in 
the past, it has gone forever, but there is a God who has 
mercy on you; there is a God wiio speaks to your souls this 
morning; there is a God who says, "Father, beware that 
you, by your life, do not ruin the home; beware that you 
with your infidelic actions, do not spoil your boy or your 



346 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

girl; beware that you do not have a rock there that will 
crush the heart out of your family." 

2. There are not o^ily rocks in the home that need to 
be rolled away, but there are rocks in the Church that need 
to be rolled away, and one of these rocks is Scriptural 
ignorance. John says of these disciples that they did not 
believe, because as yet they knew not the Scriptures, that 
He must rise from the dead. 

Just think of it. Whose fault was it if they did not 
know the Scriptures, that He should rise from the dead? 
Was it not prophesied that He should not suffer corrup- 
tion? Did not Jesus tell them time and again He was go- 
ing up to Jerusalem, and be killed, and then rise again on 
the third day? How does it come that they did not know 
the Scriptures? Because they were ignorant of the Word 
of God. They thought, O that Word of God, that doesn't 
amount to anything; and in the present day there is so 
much ignorance of God's Word. You have plenty of time 
to read the daily newspapers, plenty of time to read novels, 
plenty of time to read books by the score, that never make 
you intelligent, but, oh! how little time for the old Bible; 
so little time to find out just exactly what God does say ; so 
little time for the instruction of youth! Oh, may the Lord 
our God help us this morning to roll the rock of ignorance 
out of the Church. 

And not only the rock of Scriptural ignorance, but there 
is another rock that ought to be rolled out of every church 
on earth, and that is sinful unhindness. How unkind the 
people were to Jesus Christ on Good Friday; how they 
whipped Him; how they scourged Him; how they drove the 
crown of thorns down on His head; how they spit into His 
face; how they gambled at the foot of the cross; how they 
thrust their daggers at Him when hanging on Calvary! 
And now the grave opens its mouth, and it seems to speak 
and say: Oh ? unkind humanity! Here is the risen Lord 
that you slapped in the face for the last time ; here is your 
risen Lord on whom you put the crown last Friday. Oh! 
unkindness has never died. You find it in every church. 
How often we say unkind things of each other, about our 
betters, about those so far above us that it would make us 



EASTER. 347 

dizzy to rise to their height; but envy and a kind of mean- 
ness in our own souls stirs us up to slap God's children in 
the face. I will dare say that many a time there is a good 
Christian down on his knees praying earnestly for the very 
soul that is finding fault with the one that is down on his 
knees. Look back, not for a year, but ouly over the past 
week. What have you said, what have you done? Will 
the time never come when Christian people know that the 
only right way to live is to be forgiving? Will the time 
never come when God's people will learn that kind words are 
a blessing, and rough, angry words are a curse? Will the 
time never come when God's people will learn that we can, as 
a community of saints, lore each other and walk hand in 
hand for the building up of the kingdom of God? If, there- 
fore, you find in your own soul this morning envy, hatred, 
malice or unkind feeling toward any one, for God's sake do 
not step up to this altar this morning and go to communion. 
In God's name pray now that the stone may be rolled away. 
And not only should the stone of sinful unkindness be 
rolled away in the Church of God, but there are so many 
rocks; if I had time this morning I would love to dwell on 
them, but the only one I shall mention yet is small debts, 
that may accumulate from time to time. We sometimes 
talk about the great Church debts, as if the church really 
had great debts. I have never found great debts in the 
Church yet. If I were to go to one of your homes this morn- 
ing, and find a man sitting in his chair complaining and 
wringing his hands about his awful debt; if I were to ask 
him, "What are you going to do to get rid of it?" and he 
would say, "I do not know; we have got to bring up some 
scheme of some kind to raise that debt;" if, finally, I should 
say, "My dear brother, how much is that debt?" and he 
should say, "It is the enormous sum of $3," I should think 
the man was crazy; and yet we have a congregation here 
this morning that surely has one thousand good Christian 
people in it; it may have more; and if every communicant 
in this church this morning would simply say, "I am going 
to pay my share of the expense to get rid of the debt," it 
would be done; and, even if our debt this morning were six 
thousand instead of three thousand dollars, it would take a 



348 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

very small effort on the part of those who can roll it away; 
but the great trouble with too many of us is that we start 
out by giving a nickel or a dime a Sunday; we did that 
when we were poor, and since that we have got our own 
homes; we are earning five dollars where we used to earn 
one, and we are still giving that little stingy nickel, and 
wondering why the Church of God does not prosper. The 
Lord does not ask the widow to give much, but He does 
praise her for giving her mite, and I do claim there is no 
person on earth so poor that he cannot do something for 
God and be happy because he has done it. I do claim that 
there are some that are doing too much, and others who are 
doing too little. One family in this church, during the 
past year, gave $60; another, worth three times more, gave 
$5. It is not right. All that I would ask you this morn- 
ing to remember is, that when these poor women went to 
the grave, they did not go empty handed; they bought their 
spices and paid for them, to honor a dead Lord. What 
should we not give this morning, and all through life, to 
honor a risen Lord? May, therefore, in every church on 
earth, the debts be rolled away, and never let them accu- 
mulate again. 

3. There are a few stones lying around in the world 
that ought to be rolled away, and the first one I would 
mention is a Christless religion. There is so much religion 
these days of the character that Satan had, when he asked 
Jesus to fall down and worship him. It is not my purpose 
this morning to be specific; it is not my purpose this morn- 
ing to go into detail; but every thinking man knows that 
what I say is true, that there is so much Christless religion 
to-day that very few people are quite in the clear any more, 
whether they are for God or against Him. The rolling 
away of that stone from the sepulchre of Jesus, once and 
forever settles the fact that God the Father, Son and Holy 
Ghost, is the true God and no other, and a Christian has no 
right to worship, if it is not distinctly understood, that this 
is the religion. Look around you, therefore, in your daily 
life, in all your surroundings, and ask yourself the ques- 
tion, What kind of religion has the world? and the answer 
comes back, It is a universal religion, without Christ in it 



EASTER. 349 

as the only Redeemer of the world, and even when the word 
Christ and Lord is used it is only used as a moral man. 
Jesus said: "Many will say to Me in that day, Lord, Lord, 
have we not prophesied in Thy name? and in Thy name 
have east out devils? and in Thy name done many wonder- 
ful works? And then I will profess unto them, I never 
knew you : depart from Me, ye that work iniquity." May 
God help the Church of God on earth to roll the Christless 
religion rock out of the way. 

Then there is another heavy stone that ought to be 
rolled out of the way in this world, and that is Christless 
business. If I could take every male member of this 
church this morning with me just for one week, and get 
you, with me, to kneel down by the side of the broken- 
hearted mothers and wives and ruined homes caused by 
this damnable drink traffic, that is carried on and sup- 
ported by professed Christians, you would begin to see that 
it is time that this rock be rolled away. For my part, I do 
hope and pray that I may live to see the day when we can 
go up and down the streets of every city and town in this 
w r orld without being insulted by the strong breath of the 
men who are swaggering to and fro, and gambling, and 
robbing their homes and ruining their souls. There are 
some questions that will stand debating, but when a man 
reaches over a counter and deals death and damnation to 
my boy or to your boy, to my father or to your father, and 
pulls down the blinds and does these things in the dark, 
every man knows that the thing is wrong; and just as long 
as professed Christians will rent their houses for such 
damnable business, and just as long as professed Christians 
will go on and support it by their presence, and just as long 
as ministers of the Gospel will keep their mouths tied 
against these evils, the conscience of the world will not 
waken up on these important questions. I verily believe 
that the saloons of Mansfield are damning more souls every 
year than all the preachers of the Gospel are saving! Roll 
the rock away! That is only one business. I say no dif- 
ference what your business is, if you cannot begin it in the 
morning in the name of Jesus, the risen Lord, stop it! You 
say it is all light to go to these places. Did you ever stop 



350 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

at the counter, and thank God for that glass of beer you 
were drinking there? Did you ever see a saloonkeeper 
kneel down by his whisky barrel, and thank God for this 
good business, to His glory? Koll the rock away! 

I say, then, roll away not only every Christless business, 
and every Christless religion, but roll away every Christless 
amusement. The world enjoys some things that the Church 
cannot. I do not suppose that the Pharisees and Scribes 
ever had a happier day than when they were nailing Jesus 
to the cross. There was a regular jubilee around that 
cross; happy day, happy day, for the men that nailed Jesus 
to the cross. Then, when Jesus rose from the dead, there 
was a happy day for the children of God, but where are the 
old Pharisees? They are having a very sad day of it. So 
you see the question of amusement is not a set rule, and 
not laid down to suit everybody; but we are speaking this 
morning, not to a class of Pharisees and scribes, but to 
professed Christians — to Christians who ought to know 
where they are in the right and where they are in the 
wrong. I am not going to tell you this morning that it is 
wrong to dance, or wrong to play cards, or to do this or 
that, but I am here to tell you that Jesus Christ rose from 
the dead; I am here to tell you that, when Jesus rose from 
the dead, there was joy in heaven; joy among the disciples; 
joy among all Christians, and their joy consisted in this, 
that they rejoiced in Jesus Christ! And I say to you this 
morning that, whatever has been your path of life in the 
past; no difference where you have spent your nights; no 
difference what has been jouv greatest enjoyment, let us 
from this Easter morning start out with this one rule, and 
stand by it, Whatever I can do for my enjoyment, with 
Jesus Christ in my presence, I will do it; and anything that 
is called joy and happiness, without Jesus in it, Oh! that is 
a rock that needs to be rolled away. 

II. We will notice that there are many rocks already 
rolled away. "And when they looked, they saw that the 
stone was rolled away;' for it was very great." These 
stones were rolled away for the Jews; they were rolled 
away for Jesus; and some were rolled away for us. 



EASTER. 351 

1. Certain stones were rolled away for the Jews. We 
are told by one of the evangelists that these men who cruci- 
fied Christ went to Pontius Pilate and told him that the 
report had been given out that this Man should rise on the 
third day, and therefore it was necessary to put a guard 
around that grave, and necessary to seal the rock, lest He 
be taken away at night and then these disciples say He 
rose from the dead, and the last error should be worse than 
the first. So Pontius Pilate said: "You have your guard; 
you go and attend to that." The stone was sealed; the 
guard was placed around it; the penalty was death if Jesus 
should escape; everything was done human hands could do 
in order that Jesus Christ might not be taken from the 
grave; but Mary and the women come to the grave; Peter 
and John come to the grave; the angel of God comes to the 
grave: but where is the guard? Where is the stone? The 

Q 7 o 

guard could not be found; the stone becomes a throne for 
the angel, and Jesus is risen from the dead and the last 
effort to try to keep Jesus in the grave is rolled away for 
the Jews. 

Not only was their last effort rolled away, but also the 
Sabbath of the Jews was rolled away. "And when the 
Sabbath was past, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother 
of James, and Salome, had bought sweet spices, that they 
might come and anoint Him." They did not anoint Him 
on the Sabbath day, but when the Sabbath was past. How 
strange it is that custom has such a wonderful hold on us. 
Some people, in speaking of the Sunday-school, always call 
it the Sabbath-school; they said Sabbath-school when they 
were young people; they say it to-day, and they will say it 
until they die, and yet they always mean Sunday-school. 
There is truth in this. If you will look at the latest defini- 
tions, you will find that Sabbath does not mean Sunday. 
It is a far-fetched custom to call this day Sabbath; the real 
truth of it is that the seventh day of the week is the Sab- 
bath, and that belongs to the ceremonial law and not to the 
moral law. The Ten Commandments, as you all under- 
stand, are partly ceremonial, and essentially moral. The 
fact that the Ten Commandments speak of leading us out 
of the land of Egypt is ceremonial; you and I were not led 



352 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

out of Egypt. The fact that they were to keep the seventh 
day instead of the first day was ceremonial. The apostle 
tells us that we should not let any man judge us according 
to meat, or drink, or in respect of an holy day, or of the 
new moon or of the Sabbath-days, which are a shadow of 
things to come; but the body is of Christ. Jesus Christ 
arose from the dead on Sunday, on the first day of the 
week, on the Lord's day, and it is the Lord's day now, and 
the Sabbath is past, and past forever; it is rolled away; we 
have no Sabbath any more; we have Sunday now, the 
Lord's great day, and that is the reason we can speak now 
of Sunday activity and not of Sunday laziness. 

We also find that every hope of the Jews for a Savior to 
come is rolled away. When the grave was opened near 
Jerusalem, it was opened not far away from where Jesus 
said that not one stone of that wall should remain on top 
of the other; forty years passed by, and the Roman army 
stood there; the wall was torn down; the plow turned the 
furrow w r here that wall once stood, and the temple w r as 
fired, and the records were burned, and to-day there is not 
a Jew on God's earth any more, that would know, if a 
Savior should come, that he was a son of David; the record 
is destroyed, and the rock is rolled away. 

2. Not only are rocks rolled away for the Jews, but 
they are rolled away for Jesus. 

The poverty of Christ is rolled away forever. Oh! how 
poor Jesus was. "The Son of man hath not where to lay 
His head." Think of it, that poor Son of God, with not even 
a pillow for His head. No wonder He sat down somewhere 
to rest; no wonder He slept on the little ship in the midst 
of the storm; He was a poor Savior, but when He arose 
from the dead, He arose not in poverty — poverty forever 
rolled away. 

Not only His poverty rolled away, but also all His suf- 
ferings. That was a suffering life of Christ, from the day 
that He was circumcized until the day that He gave up His 
spirit into the Father's hands, it was all suffering. I would 
not to-day again harrow your souls and your minds with 
the awful suffering of Christ on Calvary. What a rest it is 
to my soul to know that those days are past! What a glo- 



EASTER. 353 

rious message it is to my soul and yours to know that, after 
all, Jesus is not sleeping in the grave, and is risen from the 
dead to suffer no more. That suffering rock is rolled away. 

Where are His enemies now? Where is the mob that 
cried out: "Crucify Him! Crucify Him!?" Where are 
the soldiers who lashed His back and spit in His face and 
crowned Him with thorns and nailed Him to the cross? 
Where is the Roman guard? Where is Death? All His 
enemies are conquered. The stone is rolled away! 

3. Not only do we find that rocks are rolled away for 
Jesus, but we find that they are also rolled aivay for us. 
There are certain questions that stand before us time and 
again, and the first is, Are the Scriptures God's Holy Word? 
That rock is now, once and forever, rolled away. If there 
ever was a time when it looked as though the Bible were 
not true, it was when Jesus was sleeping in the grave, and 
the stone was sealed and the guard stood around it. It 
looked then as if, after all, what the prophets said was not 
true; but lo, and behold! the angel comes, the stone is rolled 
away, Jesus arises; and then, when we find these women 
coming to the sepulchre, the angel said unto them, He is 
risen as He said. As He said, laying emphasis on these 
three words, As He said. And on the judgment day you 
will know that every word in this Book is true, as He said — 
that rock is rolled away for. us. 

Another question sometimes presents itself to us, not 
only do the people know each other in heaven, but, Is it 
known in heaven whether we are Christians here on earth? 
I answer, Yes. The angel said to these women, Go and 
tell the disciples and Peter, that He is risen from the dead. 
Why so much emphasis laid on this word, Peter? Peter 
w r as the man who denied his Savior. The angels in heaven 
noticed it. We are told that there is joy in the presence of 
the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth. When 
Peter went out and wept bitterly, it was noticed in heaven; 
the angels up there knew Peter, and when poor Peter, 
heart-broken, not knowing whether he should ever be rein- 
stated or not, was walking around on earth, God said to the 
angel on Easter, Fly, fly and roll the rock away, and as 
soon as you see a messenger, send him out and tell Peter 
23 



354 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

Christ is risen from the dead; we know up here in heaven 
what is going on on earth; we know the tears that fall from 
repenting eyes; we know the children of God. 

So you see the stones are rolled away even for us. I 
have not time to dwell upon other rocks that I might men- 
tion that are rolled away for us, but there is one thought 
that I wish to impress upon you in conclusion, those beauti- 
ful words of the angel: He is not here: behold the place 
where they laid Him. This morning let us not forget, my 
friends, that we are to behold the place where the Lord 
lay; to remember that if we die we shall live again. If the 
Eesurrection means anything this morning, it means that 
as the stone was rolled away from the grave of Jesus it 
shall be rolled away from your father's grave, from your 
mother's grave, from your son's grave, from your daugh- 
ter's grave, from your wife's grave, from your husband's 
grave, from your little children's graves. If a man dies, 
shall he live again? Behold the place where the Lord lay; 
it is now empty; He is not here. 

Yes, in conclusion, He is not here. This may be said of 
many of us before long. I suppose in many a church this 
morning there are people who wonder how long their pas- 
tor will still be with them; I suppose there are in every 
church a few people, who wish and wish and wish that the 
day would come when this man of God would be called 
away. Let there be nothing prophetic in what I say this 
morning, but let me assure you all that'the time will be 
here before very long when it can be said of him who stands 
in this pulpit this morning, He is not here. I do not wish 
to break in on your Easter joy this morning, but, my 
friends, there are prayers that will soon be answered. As 
I look out over this audience this morning, I cannot but 
notice the faces of many people who are ready to come to 
God's altar, and I cannot help noticing that many who were 
here before will never be with us again. As you stand here 
to receive the body and blood of your Lord to-day ? in com- 
memoration of His death and resurrection, let us not for- 
get this one thought: you will not always go to communion; 
the opportunity will not always be here; some time or other 



EASTER. 355 

you will partake of the Lord's Supper for the last time, and 
it will be said thereafter: he is not here. 

This can be said not only of the altar; it can be said of 
the house of God. There may be joy in the presence of the 
angels of God this morning to see this audience worship 
the true and living God, and yet how many there are who 
have come to the house of God, possibly on the last Easter 
morning for them in this world; on next Easter morning 
possibly another voice shall be heard from this pulpit; there 
may be another voice going down these aisles saying: he is 
not here. 

This voice will not only go through the aisles of the 
church, this voice will go to your homes. It means some- 
thing to be a father in a home; it means something to be a 
mother in the home. What these people did at the grave 
of Jesus Christ, they did quickly; they ran to the grave and 
they ran away. There are certain things that must be at- 
tended to in your homes and attended to soon, for it will 
not be long until the loud and cheerful song will be turned 
into mourning; it will not be long until many a home will 
have to hear the solemn, deep-meaning voice : he is not 
here — and she is not here. 

And this voice not only will go into your homes, it will 
go into your grave. Thanks be to God, He giveth us the 
victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. The time is coming 
when we can say, with the poet: 

"Hark, they whisper, angels say 
Sister Spirit, come away! 
What is this absorbes me quite — 
Steals my senses, shuts my sight — 
Drowns my spirit, draws my breath, 
Tell me, my soul, can this be Death? 
The world recedes ; it disappears ; 
Heaven opens on my eyes ; my ears 
With sounds seraphic ring ! 
Lend, lend your wings ! I mount, I fly ! 

O Death, where is thy sting? 
O grave, where is thy victory?" 

Yes, the time is coming when God shall come in the 
clouds, the glorious, risen Redeemer, and shall shake the 



356 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

graves through His fingers, and in the palm of His hand 
.shall stand the risen multitude, and in the graves it can be 
said, They are not here. Only a few moments later and 
Ave will stand face to face before our God, to give an ac- 
count of every sinful thought, for every sinful word, for 
every sinful deed — yes, as God's Word says — for every idle 
word. But that judgment is not for a week; it is not for a 
month; there is a day for the judgment, and there never 
was a day that did not have a going down of the sun; there 
never was a day that did not have its end. The judgment 
day will pass by, and it will be said then, They are not here. 
And where will we be — in heaven or in hell? If lost, it 
will be said in heaven: he is not here; if saved, it will be 
said in hell: they are not here. 

"Hallelujah! Lo, He wakes! 

Lives! o'er death and hell victorious; 
Earth in awe with trembling quakes, 

As the Hero rises glorious ; 
He who died on Golgotha, 
Jesus lives, Hallelujah! 

Hallelujah! see the tomb 

Ye, who o'er His death are pining: 
Dry your tears, to joy give room, 

While the radiant sun is shining. 
Hear the engel's Gloria ! 
Jesus lives, Hallelujah! 

Hallelujah! why seek ye 

Yet among the dead the living? 
Christ is risen in majesty! ■ 

Hence away with gloomy grieving, 
Join with her of Magdala : 
Jesus lives, Hallelujah! 

Hallelujah! then I cry: 

Christ too will from death restore me, 
Take me to His throne on high, 

Whither He has gone before me. 
Faith exults : Victoria ! 
Jesus lives, Hallelujah!" 



EASTER. 357 



PRAYER. 



O God, our Heavenly Father: We thank Thee for this glorious Easter 
morning ; we thank Thee for the souls that Thou hast brought together to 
listen to Thy Holy Word; and we thank Thee that Thou hast hid Thy ser- 
vant this morning behind Thyself; we thank Thee that it can. still be said 
of us on this Easter morning, They are here, and that they are here to receive 
the body and blood of the Lord Jesus Christ according to His Word, as 
He hath said. We pray Thee now that Thou wilt give us a special blessing. 
Oh ! do Thou dispel from all our hearts all unkindness ; everything that is 
wrong and hateful, and pour into us the spirit of Thy love, of that con- 
quering love that will make us stretch out the hand to reach for a brother ; 
to reach for a sinner ; to reach the fallen, and to lift them up in Thy most 
blessed name. O God, prepare us now for the celebration of Thy Holy 
Supper. Do Thou cleanse us from all sin, and give us faith in these words, 
"Given and shed for you for the remission of sin ; this do in remembrance 
of Me." We ask all these blessings in the name of the Blessed Master,, who 
was dead, and rose again, and who taught us ever in this manner to pray: 

Our Father, who art in heaven : Hallowed be Thy name ; Thy kingdom 
come; Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our 
daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass 
against us. Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil : for Thine 
is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory forever and ever. Amen. 



FIRST SUNDAY AFTER EASTER. 



SUNDAY. 



John 20: 19-31. 

^/^■JHEN the same day at evening, being the first day of the week, 
when the doors were shut where the disciples were assembled for 
fear of the Jews, came Jesus and stood in the midst, and saith 
unto them, Peace be unto you. And when He had so said, He shewed unto 
them His hands and His side. Then were the disciples glad, when they saw 
the Lord. Then said Jesus to them again : Peace be unto you ; as My 
Father hath sent Me, even so send I you. And when He had said this, He 
breathed on them, and said unto them : Receive ye the Holy Ghost : Whose- 
soever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them ; and whosesoever sins ye 
retain, they are retained. But Thomas, one of the twelve, called Didymus, 
was not with them when Jesus came. The other disciples therefore said 
unto him, We have seen the Lord. But he said unto them, Except I shall 
see in His hands the print of the nails, and put my finger into the print of 
the nails, and thrust my hand into His side, I will not believe. And after 
eight days again ■ His disciples were within, and Thomas with them : then 
came Jesus, the doors being shut, and stood in the midst, and said, Peace 
be unto you. Then saith He to Thomas, Reach hither thy finger, and behold 
My hands; and reach hither thy hand, and thrust it into My side; and be 
not. faithless, but believing. And Thomas answered and said unto Him, 
My Lord and My God. Jesus saith unto him, Thomas, because thou hast 
seen Me, thou hast believed ; blessed are they that have not seen, and yet 
have believed. And many other signs truly did Jesus in the presence of 
His disciples, which are not written in this B'ook. But these are written 
that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that 
believing ye might have life through His name." 

Sanctify us, O Lord, through Thy Truth; 
Thy Word is Truth. Amen. 



Dearly Beloved: — 

When God created the heavens and the earth, on the 
sixth day He planted the holy law in the heart of man, and 
one of these commandments impressed on that heart, even 

358 



FIRST SUNDAY AFTER EASTER. 359 

before the day came, was : Keep the Sabbath Day holy. And 
when all things were created, on the seventh day God rested 
from all His labors. When in time this moral law became 
effaced, as it were, from the heart of hardened sinners, God 
repeated this law. It was so important that He wrote it 
with His own linger, and gave it to Moses on Mount Sinai, 
and there He put the one word "Kenieniber" at the head 
of the third commandment, and said, Eemember the Sab- 
bath Day to keep it holy. That first Sabbath Day was not 
the first day of the week, but the seventh, as all men admit. 
Time passed on and other laws came into existence — 
ceremonial, civil — a ceremonial law, teaching the people 
how to worship; a civil law, showing them how to govern 
their nation; the moral law, partly ceremonial, but in- 
trinsically moral, stands. Time passed on and the Lord 
Jesus Christ was nailed to the cross. As He finished 
creating on the sixth day, so on the sixth day He finished 
redemption. That night they placed Him in a borrowed 
grave to sleep the sleep of death. As He rested from all 
His labors on the seventh day back at creation, so at the 
end of redemption He rested on the seventh day in His 
grave, and it was the Sabbath day. That day was not 
Sunday. In the 16th chapter of Mark we read that when 
the Sabbath was past, the women started early for the 
sepulchre of Jesus. So, my friends, those women did not 
go to the grave on the Sabbath day, but they went on the 
first day of the week, now called Sunday. The first Easter, 
therefore, on earth, was not Easter Sabbath, but Easter Sun- 
day. In our text to-day we read that after eight days again 
His disciples were within, and Thomas with them : then 
came Jesus, the doors being shut, and stood in the midst, 
and said, Peace be unto you. The second time, therefore, 
that Jesus appeared unto His disciples, and said Peace be 
unto you, was not the Sabbath day; it was the eigth day, 
or the first day of the week, and from that day to this, 
the first day of the week has not been the Sabbath, but Sun- 
day. I will admit that language has adopted the word Sab- 
bath for Sunday, but the Jewish Sabbath is still Saturday, 
and Sundav is the first dav of the week. I wish this morn- 



300 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

ing, by the help of God, to bring out the hidden treasure in 
this great lesson, with the one word as a key — 

SUNDAY. 

I. I call your attention to this great truth, that the first 
Sunday was a great day. The day consists of the morning, 
the noon and the evening. The first Sunday was great in 
all its parts. 

1. The first Easter morning was a great morning in 
heaven; in hell; and on earth. 

Oh! what a morning that must have been in heaven, 
when God said to the angels, My Son will arise this morn- 
ing; fly down to earth and roll the rock away. What a 
stir there must have been around the throne of God when 
that hour for which the angels had been looking for thous- 
ands of years, had now arrived. 

Not only was that a great hour in heaven, but it was 
a great hour in hell. We confessed a few moments ago that 
we believed that Jesus Christ descended into hell, and if 
you want to find where that is written in the Bible, turn 
to 1 Peter 3, and there you will find that when Jesus Christ 
was quickened to life, He went and preached to the spirits 
in prison, of the days of Noah. In other words, when Jesus 
Christ died on Calvary, Satan must have thought, The vic- 
tory is mine; all hell must have had a jubilee; but when 
Christ comes to life, the first thing is not to roll the stone 
away; the first thing is not to appear to man, but the first 
thing is to go down to the gates of hell, and say, as the 
poet Goethe says : 

"Speak, hell, speak, where is thy victory? 
Behold, Satan, behold thy kingdom crushed." 

The powers of hell had to know that Christ is living, 
and He did not go down there in His humility, but in His 
exaltation, as the Mighty King, not to suffer, but to conquer, 
and therefore, let us confess aloud, I believe He descended 
into hell. 

It was not only a great morning in hell, — for this con- 
quering cry at the gates of hell, must have taken place 



FIRST SUNDAY AFTER EASTER. 301 

between the midnight hour, and early in the morning — it 
was a great morning on earth. That was a great morning 
down near Jerusalem, when the angel of God rolled the 
rock awav; it was a great morning for those women, who, 
with their broken hearts, ran to that grave with their spices 
to honor the Master, to find that He was not there; to find 
that, after all, Jesns had risen from the dead; that was a 
great hour for John and Peter, when they heard the mes- 
sage, The Master liyes ! Behold the place where the Lord 
lay : He is not here. It was a great morning on earth when 
the human race learned the great fact that no sea, no fire, 
no grave, no rocks or mountains can hold the dead that 
shall rise again. 

2. It was not only a great morning, but that first Sun- 
day was a great noon. Just what took place between the 
early hours of the morning, and the afternoon hours, we 
are not told in the Bible, but we can gather from the early 
commands of the morning, and from the actions in the eve- 
ning about what took place. The very fact that the an- 
nouncement went out that they should meet the Son of God 
in Galilee, must have called the disciples together for a 
conference; must have stirred up the whole city. We do 
know that the scribes and the Pharisees went to Pontius 
Pilate and tried to hire men to say that they stole Jesus, 
in order that they might escape the sneers of the people 
on the streets. There are some things we know about that 
noon. We know that up there in the skies stood the sun 
looking down with a glory as it never did before. When 
God said, Let there be light, there was light. When the 
Light of the world was going out on Calvary's hill, the light 
of the heavens went out, and that sun that went out that 
noon on Good Friday, on the old Sabbath, did not see its 
Lord, for He was sleeping in the sepulchre; and the next 
day that sun shines down for the first time in its history, 
on the risen Son. of God, and it was a great noon up in the 
skies. 

It was not only a great noon up there; it was a great 
noon for the Son of God Himself. God in all eternity laid 
the plan to redeem the world; for thirty-three years He 
walked on earth, and bore the burdens of the day, labored 



362 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

under the burning sun which He had created with His own 
Word. At last the hour came when He must die. All 
nature took part in its mourning; the sun refused to shine 
after the three long hours, having shown to the world that 
this is the Son of God. When that sun went down at noon, 
it went down on Jesus Christ bearing the wrath of God 
in all eternity for man in three hours; He was treading 
the wine-press of the wrath of God alone; the flood of the 
sins of the world was up to the bit of the steed that He 
was riding to death. He goes to sleep, commending His soul 
into the hands of His Father; He sleeps until Easter morn- 
ing; the stone is rolled away; He comes out, and the Son 
of God not only is on earth, but He stands there in a rela- 
tion to the sun in the heavens as He never did before. Now 
He stands there as One who has won the victory over death ; 
now He stands there as One who shall eventually, in the 
heavens, when there is no sun any more, and no moon any 
more, and no stars any more, be the Light of the world. 
It was a great day for Jesus, that noon hour. 

And surely it was a great hour for the sons of men. 
By twelve o'clock I am sure that every man in Jerusalem 
heard that the grave is opened; I am sure that it was the 
conversation in every home. What became of Jesus of Naza- 
reth; where is He, and what will the Pharisees do now; 
and what will Pontius Pilate do now; and what will all 
His enemies do now? They have scourged Him; they have 
spit in His face; they have nailed His hands and His feet 
to the cross; they have compelled Him to go to death; and 
now He lives! What next? Oh! it was a great hour, that 
noon, in the world. 

3. Not only a great noon hour, but it was a great eve- 
ning, that first Sunday in the history of the world. It was 
a great evening on the highway. When you read what Luke 
has to say about the resurrection, you Avill not overlook 
those two men that started out for their home in Emmaus, 
about seven and a half miles northwest of Jerusalem. Those 
two men started off and were walking on the highway, and 
talking about the things that had taken place, when all at 
once they discovered a third party walking with them, and 
He asked them the question, What is troubling you? Why 



FIRST SUNDAY AFTER EASTER. 363 

are you looking' so sad? and they turned around in surprise 
and said : Is it possible that you have been around here these 
days and have not heard the great news, that over here in 
Jerusalem Jesus of Nazareth was crucified last Friday; they 
laid Him down in the grave; they put a stone up against 
the grave and sealed it; and took the Roman guard and 
placed it around it, and the penalty was death if Jesus 
should come out of the grave ; and this morning some women 
went there and the stone was rolled away ; not a soldier was 
seen ; a vision of angels was there, and it is the news of the 
whole country ; we are astonished, and we do not know what 
happened. And then this One that walked with them said, 
Oh you fools, and slow of heart to believe: have you never 
read what the Bible teaches? And then He began to ex- 
plain from Moses to Malachi what the Word of God said 
should come to pass; He told them the prophecy that a 
Savior is coming; He told them of the 53d chapter of 
Isaiah, how He should be oppressed and afflicted, and like 
a lamb be led to the slaughter; He told them of the 22nd 
Psalm, how His hands and His feet should be pierced; He 
told them how this One that should come should sleep in 
the grave, and that God would not suffer Him to see cor- 
ruption. Have you never read the Word of God? And 
while He was talking to them as He did, they came to the 
little village, and the two men began to turn into their homes, 
and Jesus acted as though He were going past; and they 
said, Come in and abide with us, it is late; come in and 
take your supper with us. And as He sat at meat with 
them, He took bread, and blessed it — and so should we ; 
we should sit down, not like some professed Christians, with- 
out prayer; not like the swine, and begin to eat. He lifted 
up His hands and began to ask the blessing, and lo, they 
see holes through His hands! Lo, the One that it was said 
in the 22nd Psalm should have His hands pierced, was sitting 
there, and they beheld the risen Lord in their home. That 
was a great evening in the home and on the highway. And 
as soon as they discovered that it was Jesus Christ Himself, 
lo, they looked, and He was not there. Wonderful is His 
name! 



364 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

They did not eat that supper ; they^ started out for Jeru- 
salem. I tell you, when you have got the Spirit of God 
in you, you do not get so tired. If that had been some 
of us, we should have said, We walked all the way home; 
we will sleep to-night. But the Spirit of God was in their 
hearts — Resurrection day — Resurrection noon — Resurrec- 
tion evening — Sunday — And they said, We will go back to 
Jerusalem. It did not take them long to go; it is not long 
until they are knocking at the door of the familiar room, 
and they are admitted, and there they step into the presence 
of the disciples and say, We have had supper with Jesus 
Christ ! And oh ! how astonished they were ; they could not 
believe it ; they did not believe these two men, and no sooner 
had these two men given their testimony, than they look 
around, and they are frightened. What is the matter? 
There stands Jesus in their midst, and their doors were 
locked, and their windows were closed — how did He get 
there? God can go anywhere. He is standing in their 
midst, and holding up His pierced hands, and saying : Peace 
be unto you! Peace be unto you! Peace be unto you! 
Oh ! that was a great evening for the Church of God. That 
was God's church up in that upper room. Why did He 
say "Peace" three times? Because in the Church of God we 
have peace pur aliased; peace placed and peace proclaimed. 

Peace purchased. "And when He had so said, He shewed 
unto them His hands and His side." First He said, "Peace 
be unto you." Now look at these hands. He pulled back 
His garment and said, Look here. Here is the wound where 
the sword went into My heart, and out came the blood and 
the water. John never forgot that sight, and that is the 
reason he wrote, "Saved by the blood and the water." By 
holding up Bis hands and showing them His side, He 
showed those disciples what it cost to get that peace. Peo- 
ple may go around without Christ and say Peace, Peace, but 
there is no peace. Moralists may go around in the world 
and depend upon their own good morality, and cry out, 
Peace, Peace, but there is no peace; the only peace there 
is in the world for man, is the peace that Jesus Christ 
showed His disciples that great Sunday evening, in His 



FIRST SUNDAY AFTER EASTER. 365 

hands and in His side, that He bought with His own death 
on Calvary. 

This peace was not only purchased, but He placed it. 
He put it where it belonged. People say, What is the use 
to belong to church? The same use -that there is for breath- 
ing. What is the use to breathe if you want to live? If 
you want to try to live without breathing, try it. The 
Lord God has a place for everything; He has a place for the 
sun; He has a place for the moon and the stars; and He 
has a place for the means of grace, and the place for the 
means of grace is in the Church of God. As we heard this 
morning, "There are three that bear record on earth, the 
Spirit, and the water, and the blood, and these three agree in 
one." This Word of God is the Word of the Holy Spirit — 
that is the one. The Word of God is connected with baptism 
— the water — and that is the other ; it is connected with the 
Lord's Supper — the blood — and that is the other, and these 
three agree in one, and God placed them, and placed them 
in the house of God. Listen what He said: And when He 
had said this, He breathed on them and said, Keceive ye 
the Holy Ghost : Whose soever sins ye remit, they are re- 
mitted unto them; and whose soever sins ye retain, they 
are retained. What is this? The Office of the Keys — the 
thing that many Protestant churches do not know one thing 
about. I sometimes wonder why it is that intelligent Chris- 
tians object to the office of the keys. We use it every time 
we go to the Lord's Supper; it is in this morning's service, 
printed in your hymn book to be used every Sunday morn- 
ing, and I should like to ask the question, Is it not just as 
necessary to have absolution every Sunday morning, as it 
is once in four months? 

The great truth is that the Lord Jesus Christ placed 
His peace into the Church of God : placed it there, that 
it should be proclaimed, not only by Christ Himself, but 
by His followers. "Whose soever sins ye remit, they are 
remitted unto them; aand whose soever sins ye retain, 
they are retained." If I were a lawyer, and some man 
committed murder in the first degree and came to me and 
said, What shall be done with me? and I should say, 



366 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

You will go to the electric chair and be executed, it would 
not be I that put him in the chair; it would not be I that 
electrocuted him; it would be the law. I stand here as an 
interpreter of the law of God. You come into the house of 
God this morning as a poor sinner; you believe on the Lord 
Jesus Christ ; you are sorry for your sins ; you want to lead 
a better life, and you come to me as a man of God and say, 
What can you do? and I can say on the authority of this 
Book, Your sins are remitted, and it is just as sure as if 
God from heaven said it. "Whose soever sins ye remit, they 
are remitted unto them; and whose soever sins ye retain, 
they are retained." Some one will say, Can you do that 
according to your own notion? No, sir. Receive ye the Holy 
Ghost — that is the first thing — and when a man receives 
the Holy Ghost, then he depends upon the message of the 
Holy Ghost, which is the Word of God, and that settles 
every decision. Oh ! that was a great evening for the Church 
of God ; a great evening on the highway ; a great evening in 
the home. That first Sunday morning, noon and evening 
was a great day. 

II. I would call your attention to another great truth, 
and that is that the first Sunday was no greater than the 
second. "And after eight days again His disciples were 
within, and Thomas with them : then came Jesus, the doors 
being shut, and stood in the midst, and said, Peace be unto 
you. Then saith He to Thomas, Reach hither thy finger, and 
behold My hands; and reach hither thy hand, and thrust it 
into My side; and be not faithless, but believing. And 
Thomas answered and said unto Him, My Lord and my 
God. Jesus saith unto him, Thomas, because thou hast 
seen Me, thou hast believed : blessed are they that have not 
seen, and yet have believed." This second Sunday in no 
way was any less than the first. 

1. I call your attention to this, that the second Sunday 
had all 'the greatness of the first. In the evening we love 
to look at the stars, but if the stars are in the heavens and 
dim because of the bright moon, we prefer to look at the 
moon; when morning comes and the great sun rises in the 
East, the stars vanish and the moon is almost invisible. Just 
so, my friends, it is with regard to these two Sundays. The 



FIRST SUNDAY AFTER EASTER. 367 

first Sunday had the stars of the angels; the first Sunday 
had the moon of a vision of Jesus Christ; for a moment the 
Light of the world shone forth behind the clouds, and van- 
ished. Now comes the second Sunday. Here stands the 
great Son of Go,d again in the presence of His disciples, and 
says, Peace be unto you. That second Sunday was in every 
respect as great as the first. The Son of God was there; 
''Peace be unto you" was there; the Office of the Keys was 
there; and Thomas was there; the congregation was grow- 
ing and the interest was increasing. 

2. Not only were all the means of grace and all the 
great things of the first Sunday here on the second, but 
we find that this second Sunday had a testimony that the 
first did not have. What more natural on that first day 
than that the whole city of Jerusalem should be excited? 
What more natural than that the disciples of Christ should 
have a convention and meet that night in an upper room, 
with the doors locked? It was natural, I say, that the first 
Sunday should result in such a Divine service, but well might 
we have expected that when they had deliberated over the 
matter a number of days, that when the next Sabbath-day 
would come, then Jesus and His disciples would meet on 
the seventh day; but there is not one word said about the 
seventh day. What they did on that Sabbath-day I do not 
know, but the Sabbath-day was past; Sunday comes again, 
and now these disciples say, Let us come together, and let 
us make this a memorial day of the greatest day in the 
history of the world — Christ risen from the dead on the 
first day of the week, as the sun rises in the Eastern sky, 
let us make this a memorial Sunday ; and Sunday, that eve- 
ning, was established as a day of worship, not hindering every 
other day from being a day of worship. You can read 
throughout the New Testament about the old Jewish Sab- 
bath, but you cannot read one word about the Sabbath ever 
being called Sunday, or about the first day of the week ever 
meaning Sabbath, not one ; but time and again you can read 
that on the first day of the week the people of God came 
together; the Jews still kept their old Sabbath; they try 
to do it to-day yet; where they cannot keep the Sabbath, 
they do as they do in this city, they worship on the first day ; 



368 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

but mark you, the first day of the week, on that second Sun- 
day, was established as a memorial day of the resurrection 
of Christ, and was called, as I understand it, and many 
men of God do, the Lord's day. 

It was not only a great day because of the fact that it 
was a memorial day; it was also a great day, that second 
Sunday, because of the services that took place. "Peace be 
unto you." It was on this day that the foundation was 
laid for the great Keformation of the sixteenth century. I 
do not know whether you have ever noticed in the Book of 
Eevelations about that great Eeformation day that was 
promised in the 14th chapter; but one thing you do know, 
you do know that the great battle in the days of the Refor- 
mation was to get people to believe the literal Word of God. 
It was on that point that John Calvin and Dr. Luther 
divided. Dr. Luther wrote on the table : This is My body ; 
this is My blood. The followers of Zwingii and Calvin said 
it meant something else. Dr. Luther said: When God 
speaks, He means actually what He says: and Dr. Luther 
would never have said what he did, had it not been for some 
lessons, as we find in this 20th chapter of John, where the 
great lesson is taught that religion is not against reason, but 
above it, and that infidelity has received its death blow by 
the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Wiry, if men would want 
to reason, and depend upon their little minds, they would 
have some difficulty in this chapter. I would like for any 
man to tell me how that upper room could be locked, the 
doors and windows closed, and Jesus Christ, with His flesh 
and bone, stand in their midst. Explain that to me. Who 
can do it? . When you have taken a little seashell and dipped 
the ocean dry, then I will come to your little brain to find 
God in it. The great lesson that we learn this morning from 
the second Sunday in the history of the world, is this, that 
Jesus Christ can be where He pleases at any moment, 
whether we understand it or not. There is the key to the 
Eeformation. That is the secret of the great Lutheran 
Church and of every Protestant Church that stands firmly 
on the Word of God. 

And so it is with infidelity. There was a doubter among 
those desciples. He was not exactly an atheist; he was not 



FIRST SUNDAY AFTER EASTER. 369 

exactly and infidel, but he was one of those weak Christians 
that wanted to lay down the principle that what he could 
not understand with his brain, and feel with his own fingers, 
he would not believe. That principle would overthrow 
every movement on earth; that principle would overthrow 
universal history. If I did not believe anything except that 
which I could see with my eyes, or touch with my fingers, 
I would not believe to-day that there is a Gulf of Mexico; 
I would not believe that there is an Egypt; I would not 
believe that there is a Japan or a Russia; I would not be- 
lieve there is such a thing as a Russian or a Japanese gov- 
ernment ; I would not believe there ever was a Reformation ; 
I would not believe that there ever was a Dr. Luther, or a 
George Washington. I never touched George Washington; 
never saw George Washington. The real truth of it is that 
of all the things we do believe, we never saw much, and we 
never touched much. Thomas's idea was wrong, and Jesus 
showed him his wrong by saying to him this second Sunday, 
Come here, I will take you on your own basis ; you said you 
would not believe that I rose from the dead unless you could 
see the nail prints in my hands; unless you could take 
your fingers and put them into these holes in My hand; 
and now is your opportunity; put your fingers in the nail 
prints in My hands and thrust your hand into this wound in 
My side. His principle was not right, and in astonishment 
he cried out, "My Lor,d and my God." And thus every ra- 
tionalist will stand before God on the great Judgment Day 
and say : I tried to deny Thee ; I denied Thee because I could 
not touch Thee ; because I could not see Thee, and here Thou 
art, my King, my Judge, my Lord and my God! 

III. The first and the second Sunday were no greater 
than last Sunday. Not greater in any way. 

1. Last Sunday we still had the Word of God, and holy 
baptism, and the Lord's Supper in our midst; last Sunday 
Ave had Jesus Christ with us; last Sunday we still had the 
promise, "Where two or three are gathered together in My 
name, I will be in the midst of them." Now if Jesus Christ, 
with His means of grace, was still with us, and with all 
the world last Sunday, in what respect was last Sunday any 
less than Easter Sunday number one, or Easter Sunday 
24 



370 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

number two? In other words, last Sunday we had all the 
greatness of the first two Sundays. 

2. Last Sunday the doors were not locked as they were 
the first and the second Sundays. The first two Sundays 
the children of God had to go up into an upper room and 
lock the doors in order to be safe. Last Sunday all over 
every civilized nation the doors were thrown open, men, wo- 
men and children could be seen going to the house of God; 
the doors were thrown wide open; there was a song of wel- 
come, and there was a song of praise, "He is risen! He is 
risen!' 7 

3. And He was here last Sunday in what respect any 
less than the first and the second Sundays? Look at the 
multitude last Sunday. The first Sunday there were ten 
disciples, and the two from Emmaus, and Jesus Christ; 
the second Sunday there were eleven disciples, and Jesus 
Christ ; but those eleven of the second Sunday and those ten 
and two of the first Sunday, have now multiplied in number, 
until the Lutheran Church alone, with her different branches, 
had seventy millions of people last Sunday worshipping God 
with open doors. Tell me not that Sunday is growing less 
popular, or that it means less than it ever did before. It 
was a great day last Sunday. 

IV. That leads me to the thought that the last Sunday, 
the very last Sunday, will be the greatest Sunday of all. 
Time is rolling on. For nearly two thousand years, on the 
first clay of the week, God's people have met to worship the 
risen Lord. I have no fault to find with those people who 
want to worship on Saturday. Let them worship on Satur- 
day. The wider idea of God's Word is not to confine wor- 
ship to an hour, or to one day, but to spread it out over the 
week. Paul wrote these memorable words : Let no man judge 
you in meat or in drink, or in respect of the new moon, or 
of an holy day, or of Sabbath-days, which are shadows of 
things to come, but the body is of Christ. My Sabbath be- 
gins the first day of the week and goes on over to the last. 
True Christianity consists not in Sunday Christianity and 
week day deviltry, but in Christianity all the time, every 
place, everywhere. One Sunday after the other is rolling 
by, and the time is coming, my friends, when, as the stone 



FIRST SUNDAY AFTER EASTER. 371 

was rolled away from the grave on the first Sunday, the 
heavens shall roll back like a scroll. There is a last Sunday 
in the history of the world, and when that one comes, it will 
be great — great for Jesus, great for the angels, great for the 
saints. 

1. Oh, how often Jesus told us that we are the Bride 
and He is the Bridegroom. When was there a greater day 
for you, O man, than that day when you took your bride 
home with you? Oh! what a day that will be when Jesus 
Christ shall roll the heavens back as a scroll, when He shall 
come in all His glory, the last Sunday, and shall take His 
people home! 

2. What a great day that will be for the angels. The 
angels sang together the morning of creation; the angel 
swept over Egypt and killed the first born; the angel killed 
1S5,000 of the army of Sennacherib in one night; an angel 
announced the birth of John the Baptist, and of Jesus Christ ; 
it was the angels that sang on the plains of Judea when Jesus 
was born in Bethlehem ; it was an angel that was down in 
the garden of Gethseinane when Jesus was sweating drops 
of blood; it was an angel, or a vision of angels, that rolled 
the stone away on Kesurrection morning, and oh ! what hap- 
piness there must have been in heaven! What a glorious 
jubilee when all the angels sang "He is risen! He is risen!" 
The work is done. When the last Sunday comes; when we 
have gone to church for the last time; when the old Bible 
is opened for the last time on earth; when men of God 
proclaim the last message to men; when it is announced 
in heaven, This is the last Sunday; before another Sun- 
day comes, w r e will go — and the Son of man, with all His 
holy angels, shall come, oh ! what a Sunday that will be ! 

3. Not only a great Sunday for the angels, but a great 
Sunday for the saints. Up there they are in the presence 
of their God, those dear ones of our own. How we long to 
see them, and I often wonder if they do not long to see us ? 
waiting patiently for a look on the angels' faces, for a look 
from the Master, and when it is announced that this is the 
last Sunday, when my boy can say, "Before another week I 
will see papa/' and your husband can say, "Before another 
week I will see my dear wife," and all our dear ones can 



372 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

meditate and say, "Down there on earth God can bring forth 
that flower;" my body was laid there sick, dead, deformed, 
wounded, but God shall raise it in glory, and I will put it 
on again, and with new arms and new hands, I shall embrace 
my dear mother, with her new body and her glorious body'' — 
Oh! what a Sunday that will be! 

What a Sunday for the saints above, and what a Sunday 
for those on earth! Brethren, how do you know that this 
is not the last Sunday? Are you ready? Are you ready 
to go home in the name of Jesus Christ? Have you 
been baptized in the name of the Father, Son and Holy 
Ghost? Are you where God placed His peace, in the Church 
of God? Are you living on the highest plane that God wants 
you to live? Will that day be a happy day for you? Oh! 
I wish I had time this morning to draw the conclusions of 
these great facts. One thing, my friends, must be certain. 
The Sundays that we still have to live are few; no differ- 
ence when the last Sunday is coming, the Sundays of your 
health and strength are few. I could to-day take you to 
one home after the other in this city where people are weep- 
ing because they cannot go to the house of God, and when 
they were well they would not go. Conscience is hurting 
them. My friends, there is a day coming when these feet 
will refuse to walk; and there is a day coming when these 
tongues will refuse to talk; there is a day coming when 
these ears will refuse to hear; there is a moment coming 
when the family will say, "He is not here." Then make use 
of these God-given Sundays, to hear His Word, and feed your 
souls that they may grow in grace, and not only be some- 
thing, but be all that God wants you to be. 

PRAYER. 

O God, our Heavenly Father ; We thank Thee for this memorial day 
of Thy Resurrection; we thank Thee that this day is greater than the old 
Jewish Sabbath ; and we thank Thee that that old Sabbath-day has stretched 
itself out over all the days. We thank Thee, Heavenly Father, that Thou 
hast given us Thy Word, which is more and more to our souls becoming 
a lamp of truth, and a guide. We thank Thee that Thou has fed our souls 
this morning on the bread of eternal life, and now we pray Thee that Thou 
wilt help us to appreciate the Church of God, purchased with Thy blood. 
We pray Thee that Thou wilt give us that peace, which, it is Thy will. 



FIRST SUNDAY AFTER EASTER. 373 

should be proclaimed to repentant sinners; and we pray Thee, Heavenly 
Father, that Thou wilt help us not to forget the warning to the impeni- 
tent: "Whosesoever sins ye retain, they are retained." O Lord, our God, 
inasmuch as all these things were written, that we should believe that Jesus 
is the Son of God, and believing this, have life eternal, give us this life; 
help us to hold fast to that crown. Grant us this morning a nearness to 
Thee, such as we never enjoyed before. O God, help that these tears may 
not fall in vain, but that they may lead us closer to Him who shed His 
blood that we might forever drink of that fountain, from which we may 
never go away thirsty. We ask Thy divine blessing to rest upon us this 
morning, while we pray in the language of Thy dear Son : 

Our Father, who art in heaven : Hallowed be Thy name ; Thy kingdom 
come; Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our 
daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass 
against us. Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil, for Thine 
is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory forever and ever. Amen. 



SECOND SUNDAY AFTER EASTER, 



THE HEART OF HISTORY. 

John 10: 11-18. 

//*Y AM the Good Shepherd; the Good Shepherd giveth His life for the 
sheep. But he that is an hireling, and not the shepherd, whose 
"^ own the sheep are not, seeth the wolf coming, and leaveth the sheep, 
and fleeth : and the wolf catcheth them, and scattereth the sheep. /The hire- 
ling fleeth, because he is an hireling, and careth not for the sheep. I am 
the Good Shepherd and know My sheep, and am known of mine. As the 
Father knoweth Me, even so know I the Father: and I lay down My life 
for the sheep. And other sheep I have, which are not of this fold : them 
also I must bring, and they shall hear My voice; and there shall be one 
fold and one Shepherd. Therefore doth My Father love Me, because I lay 
down My life, that I might take it again. No man taketh it from Me, but 
I lay it down of Myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power 
to take it again. This commandment have I received of My Father." 

Sanctify us, O Lord, through Thy Truth; 
Thy Word is Truth. Amen. 



Dear Christian friends : — 

There is and old saying that "familiarity breeds con- 
tempt." I do not believe that that saying can be properly 
applied to the Word of God, and yet there is even a measure 
of truth in it when we look at God's Word. There are some 
passages in the Scriptures so familiar, so well known by all 
professed Christians, that we fail to think. You have heard 
the old song that a The Lord is my Shepherd" so often that 
you sing it and never think of the Shepherd. I suppose some 
of you think that if you were to preach a sermon, or to teach 
a Sunday-school class, there is no lesson that you could teach 
better without preparation, than the text that I have just 
read ; and yet, my friends, the text before us, because of its 
familiarity, is so little understood that there is not one in a 
thousand fit to teach it. Never in all my preparations for 
sermons have I worked harder and felt my own weakness 

374 



SECOND SUNDAY AFTER EASTER. 375 

more than during the past week, and it does seem to me when 
I stand before this text, that I am standing before the very 
heart of God. May the Holy Spirit help us this morning in 
our weakness to find 

THE HEART OF HISTORY. 

I. You will please notice that there was a time when 
there was no evil in the universe ; there was a time to which 
the Savior refers when He says, "Therefore doth My Father 
love Me, because I lay down My life, that I might take it 
again." This love goes back beyond the hills, beyond the 
waters, beyond the light of creation; it goes back to that era 
in eternity when there was no evil — then God was God. 
Before the angels were, before the sun, moon and stars gave 
forth their glory, back in the ages there was a time when God 
the Father, and God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost, were 
God, and besides them was none else. Then it was that God 
knew God. "As the Father knoweth Me, even so know I 
the Father." Jesus Christ is called the Prophet, and the 
High Priest, and the King. He is Prophet because He made 
known unto us the will of the Father, whom He knew and 
who knew Him, long before the world existed. Then it was 
that God the Father knew His Son, and the Son knew the 
Father, and the Father and the Son knew the Holy Spirit. 

Not only did these three persons of the Triune God know 
each other, but they loved each other. "Therefore doth My 
Father love Me, because I lay down My life ;" but you cannot 
love any one, if you have no love in your heart. The love 
with which God the Father loved Jesus Christ was an eter- 
nal love, and that love of the Father was in the heart of His 
Son, and in the Holy Spirit. Let us then in our minds go 
back this morning to that time in eternity when there was 
absolutely no evil in the universe. 

II. Then let us come forward to a time when God did 
know that evil would come into the world. In other words, 
there never was a time in which God did not know that evil 
would come into this world. God knoweth all things. He 
knows all the past; He knows the present; He knows the 
future. 



376 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

Back beyond the council when God determined to cre- 
ate the world and save man, there was a past, and God knew 
it, all, and in that hour when it was determined that the 
Word — the Logos — should become man and save the per- 
ishing world, God knew it all. He knew what was coming; 
He knew that there would be a time when those messengers 
created in those first days, those holy angels, should rebel, 
and one of them at the head of all should go into that beauti- 
ful garden and tempt man, and lead astray the human race. 
God knew that. We are told in this Book before the founda- 
tions of the world were laid, we were called in Christ Jesus. 
How could we have been called in Christ Jesus before the 
world existed, if God had not known that evil would come, 
and the world must be called through Jesus Christ? He knew 
that time would come when the hungry wolves would be 
among the flock of God's children ; He knew that time would 
come when death would struggle with life; He knew that 
time would come wdien hirelings would run and flee from the 
flock when the wolf came. In other words, the Lord God 
knew that evil would come and there never was a time when 
He did not know it. I am trying to lead you into the heart 
of history. 

III. There was a time, then, when God's only Son, Je- 
sus Christ, made up his mind what He would be, namely, a 
Shepherd. There is a time in the history of every family 
when the only boy, or boys, must determine what they want 
to be, and such a period there was in eternity. There was 
a time when the only Son of God laid His plans, and after 
coming to the conclusion he went to the Father and said, 
It is settled; I have laid my plans; I am going to be a 
Shepherd, and as a Shepherd 

1. / shall render to the world an unbought service. He 
speaks in our text of the hirelings. "I am the Good Shep- 
herd; the Good Shepherd giveth His life for the sheep; but 
he that is an hireling, and not the Shepherd, whose own the 
sheep are not, seeth the wolf coming, and leaveth the sheep, 
and fleeth; and the wolf catcheth them, and scattereth the 
sheep. The hireling fleeth because he is an hireling, and car- 
eth not for the sheep." Oh ! this hireling can be found to-day 
in every city on God's earth. There are ministers of the Gos- 



SECOND SUNDAY AFTER EASTER. 377 

pel who are only hirelings. They preach only because they 
expect thereby to earn their bread; they are in the ministry 
for no other purpose than to make a living, and when the hire 
is gone the preacher is gone. There are members in the 
church who are there for no other purpose than simply 
because they expect to get some dollars out of that 
church, because they expect to get some business out 
of that church, because they can see by some plan that 
they have laid that they can do better to be in the church 
than out. — They are hirelings, and they are only Christians 
because they can make money thereby. There are people 
who do not do a single thing without asking the question, 
How can I make something out of this? They are like Judas 
Iscariot, they would rather see Jesus Christ go without be- 
ing anointed, than to lose three hundred pennyworth of oint- 
ment ; they would rather go to the devil than lose a dollar. 
The Lord Jesus Christ made up His mind in all eternity, that 
the thing to do is not to be a hireling, but to render an un- 
bought service. You cannot show a single example in the 
Word of God, or in the history of Jesus Christ, that He ever 
took a dollar's pay. There is one thing that He did, and 
there is one thing that every minister must do, and there is 
one thing that every honest man must do, he must eat his 
honest bread. Jesus Christ never stole anything. He wore 
a very precious garment, knit from the top to the bottom, 
undoubtedly by the hands of His own loving mother. It 
becomes our first duty to earn our bread, and we have no 
right to accept a call to the ministry, or to live in this world 
and be entirely dependent upon other men; it becomes our 
first duty to earn our bread, and honestly look every man in 
the face, and say, I am not begging of you ; but beyond that, 
my dear friends, every man ought to render an unbought ser- 
vice. I would have no happiness as a minister of the Gospel 
if I only did what the church demands of me; there is no 
pleasure in simply working for money; the pleasure comes 
in when I have earned my money to keep my family, to do a 
thousand things that I am not paid for. That is happiness ; 
that is the spirit of Jesus Christ in eternity when He made 
up His mind, I am a rich boy; I am an only Son; all things 
are Mine ; I am heir of all things ; I am going to become so 



378 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

poor that I am going to sleep in a borrowed grave, and ren- 
der an unbought service to the world. Now you are getting 
at the heart of history. 

2. "Not only/' says He, "am I going to render an un- 
bought service to the world, but I am going to give My life 
for the world. I am the Good Shepherd; the Good Shep- 
herd giveth His life for the sheep ... As the Father 
knoweth Me, even so know I the Father, and I lay down My 
life for the sheep." It was therefore determined before 
there was a world, that the only Son of God was going to 
make a world with a hill, and make that hill the founda- 
tion of a cross, and on that cross He was going to give His 
life for His sheep. That w T as determined. 

3. We are getting further into the heart of history when 
I tell you that Jesus Christ not only decided, that time 
when He decided to become a Shepherd, that He would lay 
down His life for His sheep, but furthermore that He would 
lay down and give His life to His sheep. It is one thing to 
die for a man; it is another thing to give your life to the 
man. Jesus Christ determined that He was not only going 
to die for man, and not be a hireling, but He determined that 
He was going to live a life for man and plant His very life 
into His children, and send them forth in His steps, as we 
heard in the epistolary lesson for to-day, and have them live 
His life over again on earth ; therefore you and I cannot be 
Christlike until we, like John and that other apostle, so live 
that the people can notice that we have been with Jesus 
Christ. 

4. He also made up His mind, when He chose the pro- 
fession of being a Shepherd, that He w T ould know each sheep 
by name. "I am the Good Shepherd and know My sheep" — 
know My sheep. How does He know them? Standing in 
the presence one time of a large flock of sheep, I was sur- 
prised to find that the owner knew every one by name ; look- 
ing at those sheep myself, they all looked alike ; I could not 
make up my mind at all how he could tell the one from the 
other, but he called my attention to something I had never 
noticed before, and that is that every sheep had a little fault ; 
there was none perfect ; the one had a little notch out of the 
ear ; the other had a little black spot here or there ; one had 



SECOND SUNDAY AFTER EASTER. 379 

crooked limbs instead of as straight as they should have 
been; and so every sheep had a little imperfection, and he 
knew them by their imperfections, and the thought came to 
me, 1 wonder if that is not the way Christ knows me; and, 
as I look over this audience this morning, the thought comes 
to me, Isn't that the way, after all, that God knows you? lie 
knows every sheep by name. When those three dear little 
children were brought here this morning in the name of the 
Father, Son and Holy Ghost, Jesus Christ took them in His 
arms; He knows them; He knows the name of each one 
of your little children ; and just as surely as He knows that 
these little children shall remain faithful and die in His 
name, the name goes not only on the Church record, but goes 
up there in the Book of Life. He knows the little lambs, 
and He knows the sheep. 

5. He knows them by name, and they know Rim. "I 
am the Good Shepherd and know My sheep, and am known 
of Mine." He tells us'here in this Word: "And other sheep 
I have which are not of this fold; them also I must bring, 
and they shall hear My voice." They know the voice of their 
Shepherd. I know my Shepherd's voice and you know your 
Shepherd's voice. There was a trial one time in London by 
two men over a very precious sheep; each one claimed to 
own the sheep, and each one had witnesses to prove that the 
sheep was his. When the witnesses were all heard and the 
trial was virtually over, the Judge did not know yet how to 
decide the case. Finally the thought came to him, Bring the 
sheep into the court room. The sheep was brought and 
placed in an anteroom. "Now," he said to the first one 
claiming to own the sheep, "call the sheep," and he called, 
and called, and called, but the sheep would not come; he 
said to the other, "You call," and he gave such a peculiar call 
that the sheep ran up to him. "Now," said the Judge, "it 
isn't hard to tell whose sheep this is ; it belongs to this man ; 
it knows the shepherd." So, my dear friends, you may talk 
all you please about hypocrites in the Church, but God knows 
His sheep, and His sheep know the Shepherd, and God's 
sheep hear His voice. If you were not a sheep of God, little 
would you care for church; little would you care for the 
Holy Sacraments; little would -you care for the means of 



380 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

grace, and if you are a Christian, you are bound to bear 
tbe voice of tbe Shepherd. 

6. And He determined on that great day in eternity that 
He was bound to increase that flock, and not let it grow 
smaller. "And other sheep I have which are not of this 
fold ; them also I must bring, and they shall hear My voice." 
Look at the plan of Jesus. I must bring the sheep into My 
fold. Oh, what a comfort that is to us who have relatives, 
or possibly some in our own family, outside of the kingdom of 
God; we have wet our pillows with tears; we have prayed 
that God might bring them back; and sometimes we almost 
sink in despair, but this morning I hear the voice of ihy Great 
Shepherd from the hills, "Mother, wife — patience — I must 
bring them in." In other words, I do not believe that the 
Lord God will ever let a soul perish without giving that soul 
a chance. This is Scriptural. "This is the Light that light- 
eth every man that cometh into the world." And therefore 
this precious message goes out beyond the family ; it goes out 
in all heathen lands. The plan of history is the very heart 
of history that the Gospel of Jesus Christ must reach the 
ends of the world before the end comes. 

7. And then the last thought that Jesus had away back 
there in eternity, before the world was, was this, that when 
His flock is gathered, He will bring them home. The very 
heart of Jesus therefore was, I want to be a Shepherd; I 
will die for My sheep ; I will give My life for them and I will 
give My life to them ; I will know them and they shall know 
Me ; I will gather them in and compel them to come in ; and 
when My flock is gathered, I am going to take them home. 

IV. And when this decision was settled in His own 
mind, then, my dear friends, there was a council held in 
heaven, and we notice that this plan was decided to be car- 
ried into execution by the great council of the Trinity. 

1. The plan was made known to the Father. "As the 
Father knoweth Me, even so know I the Father. Therefore 
doth My Father love Me, because I lay down My life, that I 
might take it again. No man taketh it from Me, but I lay it 
down Myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have 
power to take it again. This commandment have I received 
of My Father." There you have the resolution of the coun- 



SECOND SUNDAY AFTER EASTER. 381 

cil in heaven. In other words, the Lord Jesus Christ went 
to the Father and to the Holy Spirit, and poured out His 
heart of love. Have von never noticed, my friends, that there 
are people in this world with such big hearts, ready to love 
some one or many, that they actually become lonesome for 
an object of love. Imagine, then, Jesus Christ in all eter- 
nity, with that big heart of love, and no sheep to love. He 
went to the Father and said, I must pour out My heart of 
love. Oh Father, I have decided what I am going to be; 
I am going to be a Shepherd ; and the Father was so pleased 
with the Son that He said, My Son, I have always loved Thee 
with an everlasting love, but now I will let Thee know 7 that 
I love Thee. "Therefore doth My Father love Me, because 
I lay down My life that I might take it again." And then 
said the Holy Spirit, Oh Father and Son, I have proceeded 
from Thee in all eternity, and I ask the privilege that I may 
be a Porter at the door of the means of grace;'' and Jesus 
Christ said, "My Porter Thou shalt be ;" and God the Father 
said, "My Porter Thou shalt be." "Verily, verily I say unto 
you, He that entereth not by the door into the sheepfold, but 
climbeth up some other way, the same is a thief and a rob- 
ber ; but He that entereth in by the door is the Shepherd of 
the sheep; to Him the Porter openeth; and the sheep hear 
His voice ; and He calleth His own sheep by name, and lead- 
eth them out." Here you have a picture of the Triune Cod 
pouring out His heart for the sheep, before the plan was put 
into execution. 

Y. Xow, my dear friends, we are getting down to the 
heart of history — the plan carried out was now r begun. 
The first thing to do was to make a world. God said, Let 
there be light, and there was light. The Light of the world 
now sends forth a light, and that Light, the Word of God, 
brings worlds into existence, and on the last day of that great 
creation, two kinds of sheep are created — sheep with wool 
on their backs, with natures to go astray ; with the disposition 
not to come back; with a nature not to fight the enemy; a 
sheep that must have a shepherd and must be brought back ; 
and do you know, I do not believe the Lord God ever would 
have created a sheep if it had not been for the fact that He- 
wanted His Son, Jesus Christ, to be a Shepherd. On the 



382 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

same day that God created the sheep with the wool on their 
backs, He took the dust of the ground, called in the Hebrew, 
"Adam," breathed into the nostrils His own immortal spirit, 
gave to that being an immortal soul, and said, Here is My 
sheep. Out of the side of that man, under the arm that" she 
might be protected, from the breast that she might be loved, 
not from the foot to be trodden down, He took life — Eve — 
and this, He said, is another sheep. And no sooner were 
these sheep on God's earth than the angel in heaven rebelled, 
is hurled from heaven, becomes a wolf, and runs down among 
the little flock. It is not long until there is born to those 
two sheep a lamb, and another lamb, and that first lamb 
is taught to take care of the sheep with the wool on their 
backs, and is called Abel; and in order that this great call- 
ing might go down in history, to make plain to the world 
the Great Shepherd, Abel becomes a shepherd, and is the 
first man on God's earth to become a martyr — pours out 
his blood because the Great Shepherd is going to bleed on 
Calvary. 

Time passes on. God is making history and His heart is 
in it. The people forget their God — the flood comes — a 
few sheep are preserved in the ark, and when the flood 
is past a sheep is laid on the altar and sacrificed to the true 
and living God, and offered by the living world. The Shep- 
herd is making history. 

Time passes on, and the people forget the truth of God's 
Word, and so the Lord God goes down and selects a man 
w r hose mother must have been a Christian, and whose father 
was an idolater, and said, Come and I will give thee a land 
for thy sheep; Come on, Abraham, bring all thy fold with 
thee. And so Abraham, the father of the Israelites, through 
Jacob, is the shepherd to whom the promise of the Great 
Shepherd is given. 

Time passes on, and the people find a home in Egypt; 
time passes on, and a little child lying down under the bull- 
rushes in the river Nile is picked out by the Great Shepherd 
above to become shepherd o'er the hills on the way to Ca- 
naan. God is making history. Little Moses, drawn out of 
the water, spent forty years in Egypt, took his flight and 



SECOND SUNDAY AFTER EASTER. 383 

spent forty years watching his sheep on the hills of Arabia ; 
many a time he followed his sheep up past ^the burning 
bush." On one occasion while this shepherd is watching 
his sheep, the Great Shepherd came down in a pillar of fire, 
calls the minor shepherd to come and receive the divine law. 
Then He places in the hands of Moses that law that was writ- 
ten into the heart of Adam — I have written it with My own 
finger, says the Great Shepherd. That law was handed down 
to the people, and that law was the schoolmaster to bring 
them to Christ, the Great Shepherd. 

Time passes on and a king is wanted. Out on 
the hills of Bethlehem is a family of boys. One after 
the other is chosen, but at last David is chosen — little 
David, the great musician — little David, the bold hero. 
When a bear and a lion came and took his little 
lambs, he bounded after them, tore the jaws of the 
lion apart, tore the jaws of the bear apart, took his little 
lambs and went home — a picture of the Great Lamb of God, 
that is to tear the mouth of the big wolf of hell open and save 
you and me. God is making history. It was that boy that 
sang, "The Lord is my Shepherd ; I shall not want ; He mak- 
eth me to lie down in green pastures, He leadeth me beside 
the still waters ; He restoreth my soul ; He leadeth me in the 
paths of righteousness for His name's sake; yea, though I 
walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear 
no evil, for Thou art with me — Thou Great Shepherd — 
Thou are with me; Thy rod and Thy staff they comfort me; 
Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine 
enemies ; Thou anointest my head with oil ; my cup runneth 
over. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the 
days of my life; and I will dwell in the house of the Lord 
forever." I will follow Thee, Thou Great Shepherd of Is- 
rael. There is the heart of history. 

Time passes on; morning after morning the shepherds 
drive their sheep; morning after morning the smoke of in- 
cense goes upward, until four hundred years have passed 
since the last prophet spake — four hundred years, and the 
star of the East broke loose and started for the West, and 
the shepherds are hearing a song — it is the song of the 



384 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

angels from # heaven, and they are told on the plains of Ju- 
dea, that in Bethlehem lies the Great Shepherd. The heart 
of history in Bethlehem's crib! 

Time rolls on : This same little Jesus, rendering an un- 
bought service, works for His father without pay; this same 
Son begins His ministry; this same Son, now a man, bap- 
tized in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost; and 
that same Holy Spirit comes from heaven and sits on His 
head when He is baptized; then comes John the Baptist, 
and seeing Him, saith: Behold the Great Shepherd Him- 
self has become a Lamb — Behold the Lamb of God that 
taketh away the sins of the world. The heart of history 
is now on earth. The ministry goes on. 

Now the hounds of hell are turned loose; the old wolf 
then returns, comes and tempts Him; never were men pos- 
sessed as they were in those three years of Jesus' ministry. 
The more the hounds of hell barked, the more the flock was 
in danger ; the old Pharisees, the scribes, and hypocrites, the 
hirelings, were fleeing ; there was no hope for the poor souls ; 
they were in the hands of the enemy. Jesus Christ says, I am 
going to lay down my life for the sheep. And He not only 
laid the plan, but He promised long before He died that He 
would lay down His life for us, but that great Shepherd 
stood before the cross and said, Now the battle has got to 
be fought, and He went on Calvary's hill. I will not harrow 
your souls this morning with that awful battle on that last 
great day; suffice it to say that at last He hangs on Calvary's 
hill ; His hands are bleeding and His head bears the crown 
of thorns; His feet are bleeding; and look! they run the 
sword into the heart of the Great Shepherd — and the heart 
of history is open, and on Calvary's hill you find flowing there 
the life and the blood of our great and good Shepherd. I am 
the Good Shepherd. "The Good Shepherd giveth His life 
for the sheep." Oh! blessed Shepherd of my soul, can any 
man refuse to accept Thee? 

He slept in the grave ; He conquered death ; He had power 
to give His life and He had power to take it again. He arose 
from the dead ; forty days He spent among His people, seen 
of over five hundred at one time. At last He leads them out 
to the Mount of Olives; He stretches out His hands of bless- 



SECOND SUNDAY AFTER EASTER. ; > S -> 

in o _ the Great Shepherd goes home ; but before He goes, He 
givs the command, Go out iuto all the world; go and make 
disciples of all nations; of the old, of the young, — of the 
sheep, of the little lambs; go out and bring them into the 
fold — gather them in; and then, when the time has come, 
I will go home to My Father and give you the Holy Spirit; I 
will pray before the Father as your Intercessor ; I will be with 
you every day. Go on; go on; and search and search, on all 
the hilltops and mountains, and valleys, and bring the sheep 
into the fold; and bring in the lambs. "And other sheep I 
have which are not of this fold; them also I must bring, and 
they shall hear My voice; and there shall be one fold and 
one Shepherd." And the time is coming when this great call 
will stand out in the heart of history, when our Shepherd 
is coming again, and He will say to His holy angels, Every 
one of you, come on now ; and when the Son of man with all 
His holy angels shall come, what will they do? Many a na- 
tion will arise ; those under the earth, and those who have 
gone down at sea ; the great Judgment Day will come, and to 
the faithful He will say, when the gates of heaven are thrown 
open, Enter into the joy of your Lord, to the place I have 
prepared for you. But some will have rejected their Savior 
stubbornly, and to them He will say, Now go — not where I 
wanted you to go — but to the place prepared for the devil 
and his angels, not for you ; you cannot stay in heaven ; earth 
is changed ; depart from Me. There wull be rejoicing around 
the throne, for the Father is there and the Son is there, 
and the Holy Spirit is there, and all the saved are 
there, and the Son of God will say, "I am the One Shepherd, 
and these are My sheep." That is history. — That is the 
heart of God in history! 

Conclusion : I would love to close here, but there is one 
question I cannot refrain from asking, and that is this : If 
this Great Shepherd should come to-day, at twelve o'clock, 
are you ready to go with Him? Has not the time come when 
every Christian should be in earnest for his soul's salvation, 
and for the salvation of all his family, and for the salvation 
of the world? Hold up to the Shepherd the wonderful prom- 
ise that He must go and bring them in. May God convince 

us all to come to the Great Shepherd, accept Him as our only 

25 



386 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

hope, be baptized in the name of the Father, Son and Holy 
Ghost, and be faithful unto death, and at last receive the 
crown of eternal life. That is that easy lesson that so many 
people think they can teach without preparation. God help 
us in our weakness to go to the Great Shepherd for help. 
Amen. 

PRAYER. 1 

O God, our Heavenly Father: We thank Thee that there is a Mind 
greater than ours that has planned the ages ; we thank Thee that there is a 
Gospel power in our midst, that is stirring up the very hearts and souls of 
men, by the power of the Holy Spirit. We pray Thee, O God, for a minis- 
try that is totally consecrated to Thee, and that is willing, according to 
Thy command, to separate itself from the world. We pray Thee for a 
Christianity that is willing to work for Jesus Christ. We pray Thee that 
Thou wilt give us such a love for all things that are right, and such a 
hatred for all things that are wrong, that Jesus may know us and we know 
Him. We ask Thy special blessing to-day upon the sick of our own num- 
ber. We pray Thee, O God, to be with that family which to-day mourns 
the death of a husband whom the Great Shepherd has taken home ; and 
give us that joy that lies alone in Christianity; that joy that can look through 
the grave and up into the presence of the throne of God, to see the one 
fold and the one Shepherd. Hear this, our prayer, for Jesus' sake, who 
taught us to pray: 

Our Father, who art in heaven : Hallowed be Thy name ; Thy kingdom 
come ; Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our 
daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass 
against us. Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil, for Thine 
is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory forever and ever. Amen. 



THIRD SUNDAY AFTER EASTER. 



A LITTLE WHILE AND A LONG WHILE. 



John 16 : 16-23. 
ii \ W LITTLE while and ye shall not see Me; and again, a little while, 



H 



and ye shall see Me, because I go to the Father. Then said some 
of His disciples among themselves, What is this that He saith 
unto us, A little while and ye shall not see Me ; and again, a little while, 
and ye shall see Me ; and, Because I go to the Father ? They said therefore, 
What is this that He saith, A little while? we cannot tell what He saith. 
Now Jesus knew that they were desirous to ask Him, and said unto them, 
Do ye inquire among yourselves of that I said : A little while and ye shall 
not see Me; and again, a little while, and ye shall see Me? Verily, verily, 
I say unto you, That ye shall weep and lament, but the world shall rejoice; 
and ye shall be sorrowful, but your sorrow shall be turned into joy. A 
woman when she is in travail hath sorrow, because her hour is come ; but 
as soon as she is delivered of the child, she remembereth no more the an- 
guish, for joy that a man is born into the world. And ye now therefore 
have sorrow, but I will see you again, and your heart shall rejoice, and your 
joy no man taketh from you. And in that day ye shall ask Me nothing." 

Sanctify us, O Lord, through Thy Truth; 
Thy Word is truth. Amen. 



Dearly Beloved Friends in Christ : — 

James says, "Ye have not because ye ask not." Jesus 
says, in the beginning of this chapter, "Now I go My way 
to Him that sent Me; and none of you asketh Me, Whither 
goest Thou?" In our text He says, "Now Jesus knew that 
they were desirous to ask Him, and said unto them, Do 
ye inquire among yourselves of what I said, A little while 
and ye shall not see Me, and again, a little while and ye 
shall see Me?" They desired to ask and would not, In 
other words, Jesus finds fault with His disciples because 
they were so slow to pray ; they had not because they asked 

387 



388 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

not, and do you know that thousands of people to-day are 
ignorant: and will always remain ignorant, just because 
they are not asking questions? Just because they are not- 
going to God in prayer? Our time for prayer is short. The 
Savior says, in the concluding words of our text, a And in 
that day ye shall ask Me nothing." There was a day com- 
ing when the very thing that was now perplexing the dis- 
ciples would be solved, and in that day it was not necessary 
to ask any questions; and there is a day coming for all of 
us, when prayer will cease. Our time for praying is short. 
The real truth of it is, if some sinners do not begin to pray 
pretty soon, they never will pray. Our time for prayer 
is between this hour and death, and before another Sun- 
day comes, there will be some in eternity, who to-day are 
listening to God's Word — if not here, somewhere else. 
I wonder how many of us realize that our time for pray- 
ing is short, and I wonder how many of us realize that 
there will be a whole eternity where there is no faith any 
more, where there is no hope any more, where love and 
charity shall reign forever and ever, and w^e shall see face 
to face, and in that day we shall ask Him nothing. Our 
text impresses upon us this great theme: 

A LITTLE WHILE AND A LONG WHILE, 

and may the Holy Spirit take this little while and this 
long while, and impress them upon our minds and hearts 
to-day. A little while and a long while. 

I. There will be sorrow. 
II. There will be joy. 

I. A little while, and a long while, there will be sor- 
row. A little while in this life there will be sorrow; a long 
while in eternity there will be sorrow. 

1. A little while in this life there will be sorrow for 
the Christian and for the world. "And ye now therefore 
have sorrow, but I will see you again, and your hearts shall 
rejoice, and your joy no man taketh from you." Now they 
had sorrow — why? Because the Lord Jesus Christ was 
about to die; He was about to leave them. Their whole 



THIRD SUNDAY AFTER FASTER. 389 

trust and confidence was in that Person who had been with 
them for three long years. He announced the great fact 
that now lie is going away from them, and they were in 
deep sorrow. And here we have a picture of repentance 
and of being perplexed. The very fact that these disciples, 
on the day of the crucifixion, saw their Lord and Master 
on the cross, that night heard that He was laid down in 
the grave, dead, made them very sorrowful. Oh! what a 
sad night that was for these disciples! I can imagine that 
the people on the streets of Jerusalem hooted at them and 
said, "Where is now your Savior? Where is now^ that God 
w r hom you have been praising and worshiping? Over there 
He lies! We killed Him. We have got Him out of the 
way. The stone is before the grave. 7 ' And the poor dis- 
ciples in the depth of their sadness, went up into an upper 
room and locked the door, and sat there, and cried and 
wept. Oh! wiiat sadness! — sorrow! — a picture of true 
repentance! My dear friends, you may laugh all you please 
about repentance, — it is the only way to come to heaven. 
We have got too many people in the present day who are 
simply joining church, and are the same old-hearted people 
they w r ere before. They have never shed a tear for their 
sins; they have never gone down into the depths of God's 
holy law and discovered themselves in God's sight as they 
are, lost, condemned, sinners. A true repentant may be 
called crazy. The world may say he is losing his mind, 
but it is well to be called crazy, it is well to have it said of 
us that we are losing our minds if we are beginning to dis- 
cover our lost condition ; if we are beginning to see the awful 
burden resting upon us ; if we are led to that point by God's 
holy law, where we will cry out in anguish, O God, help me ! 
God help me! There is repentance, there is a sorrow for 
Christians a little while, and, thank God ! only a little while. 
This sorrow^ is not only found in repentance; it is also 
found while they are perplexed. The Christian has many 
perplexing questions before him. He is born in sin; he 
knows that the wages of sin is death; he knows that sick- 
ness must come; he knows that trials are in this world; 
nevertheless, there are times when the best Christians are 
like John the Baptist, in the prison ready to send messengers 



390 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

out and ask Jesus, "Art thou He that should come, or do we 
look for another?"; times when the best Christians are so 
perplexed that they do not know what to do next. Such 
was the condition of these disciples. Jesus said, A little 
while and ye shall not see Me, and again, a little while 
and ye shall see Me, because I go to the Father. And they 
said one to another, What does He mean — what can He 
mean, — a little while and we shall not see Him, and again, 
a little while, and we shall see Him? Jesus saw the ques- 
tion in their hearts, and He brought it out. Is this what 
you mean? Is this what you are perplexed about? I know 
your question. I know your perplexity; therefore I will 
tell you. In a little while they will nail Me to the cross; 
in a little while they will put Me in a borrowed grave and 
seal it shut, and a little while ye shall not see Me; and in 
three days I shall come out of that grave, and in a little 
while ye shall see Me. Now ye have sorrow; now ye are 
perplexed. And as the disciples were perplexed, I know 
that you will be perplexed; many a time you have won- 
dered why it was that you as a child of God must suffer- 
some things that others do not; why is it that such and 
such a calamity has come upon my family; why it is that 
such and such a sickness is found to reign in our home; 
why is it that my wife is afflicted as she is; why is it that 
my husband is injured as he is; my child crippled as he is; 
why is it that this and that is going on as it is? Oh, my 
friends, it is only a little while, a little while sorrow for the 
Christian. 

Also a little while, sorrow for the world. Let us not 
imagine my friends, that the world has got all the pleas- 
ure, and the Christian all the sorrow. Jesus said, "I will 
see you again, and your hearts shall rejoice, and your 
joy no man taketh from you." We can read between the 
lines, when your sorrow is turned into joy, then the world's 
joy shall be turned into sorrow; and so it was. Only a 
little while and those proud Pharisees heard the news, 
Jesus is risen from the dead! Now what? Now the world 
was in sorrow. Now they could no longer stand up before 
the disciples and say, Where is your Savior? For He was 
standing in the midst of them, saying, "Peace be unto you." 



THIRD SUNDAY AFTER EASTER. 3 ( J1 

Now they could go no further; they had spit in His face 

— they Avill never spit in it again; -they had scourged His 
back until the blood flowed — they will never scourge that 
back again; they had put the crown of thorns on His 
brow — they will never put it there again; they had put 
the sceptre in His hand — they will never put it there 
again; they had slapped Him, and buffeted Him — they 
will never do it again; they had nailed Him to the cross 

— they will never do that again; they had let out His life's 
blood, — what more could they do? they have opened up 
His heart and let the blood and the water come out. Now 
what? They had borrowed the seal and put it on the 
grave; they had fastened Him there, and surrounded Him 
with the Roman guard; they had done all that they could. 
What next? Nothing. The world in sorrow. A little 
while. I would have you understand that the world for 
a little while has more sorrow than the Christian has, and 
not only more than the Christian has, but more than the 
Christian knows. 

We sometimes imagine that the world is just having 
the grandest of times, and the Christian is always sad. It 
is not true. This Sunday in church history is called Jubi- 
late, which means, in plain English, rejoice. If children 
of God cannot have happiness in this world, who can? 
If a man saved by the grace of God, and instrumental in 
saving others, is not a happy man, who is? I would have 
you to remember that many a time the .scoundrel laughs 
to hide his sorrow. I would have you to understand that 
the world dances many a time in order to keep conscience 
from bothering it. I would have you to understand that 
the world is having sorrow, in fear, in uncertainty, of a life 
beyond, of darkness, that is worrying conscience, worry- 
ing the soul, and sometimes drives them to the unrest of 
the Wandering Jew, who can find no ease nor happiness 
anywhere, and yet laughs the laugh of scorn, trying to 
make the world believe that all joy lies in the world and 
all sorrow in Christianity. 

Now I claim that the world has not only got sorrow, 
as much as Christians have, but sorrows of which the 
Christian knows nothing. Life is but a little while, but 



392 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

that little while has got some great crisis in it; that little 
while lias got dark nights when men cannot sleep and can- 
not get away from God; that little while has a conscieuce, 
even for an ungodly man; that little while ends with 
sickness and with death; that little while has hours of 
fear and trembling; the world must come to the gates of 
death; the world must face eternity; the world must 
stand before God, and in that last hour, though it be only 
an hour, though it be only sixty minutes, a little while, 
it is an awful hour for the world, without sins forgiven, 
with Christ rejected, to stand before a dark eternity. Yes, 
there is a little while of sorrow for the child of God, and 
for the world. 

2. And then there is a long while of sorrow, but, thank 
God! the Christian knows nothing about it. He never 
needs to worry about that, because in the long while there 
are only the devil and his angels, and the lost, that will 
have that sorrow. God says in His Word, speaking of the 
Judgment Day, that the lost shall enter into eternal de- 
struction prepared for the devil and his angels. I w T ish 
every ungodly man on earth would remember that sentence. 
The loving God never prepared hell for man, and one of 
the very sorrows of hell for the very devil and his angels 
will be this, that there was a time when there was no hell; 
there was a time when we were holy angels; there was a 
time when we praised God; there was a time w T hen we 
sang together like morning stars in the hour of creation; 
there was a time w^hen we rebelled against a holy God, and 
this place, for us, had to be prepared. 

It will not only be a sad and sorrowful long while for- 
ever and ever for the devil and his angels, but it will be a 
long, long, eternally long time, for the lost and the very 
sorrow of hell for lost man will be that this place was not 
forever, and when it was prepared, it was not prepared for 
us, — prepared for the devil and his angels, and here we 
are, choosing rather the rebels of heaven, choosing rather 
the hounds of hell for company eternally, than to be with 
the saints and with God; and here we are, like that rich 
man that cried out to Abraham, "Oh! that I might have a 
drop of water to cool my burning tongue — eternal sor- 



THIRD SUNDAY AFTER EASTER. 393 

row — and the answer comes back from Abraham, "Be- 
tween me and thee there is a gulf, and it is fixed; you will 
stay there a long while/' It is fixed. Men have been try- 
ing to unfix that gulf as long as the world stands, but 
God fixed it. 

II. A little while and a long while, not only of sorrow, 
but also of joy. "And ye now therefore have sorrow, but 
I will see you again, and your hearts shall rejoice, and your 
joy no man taketh from you." So you see there is a little 
while of joy, just as well as a little while of sorrow, in this 
life. 

1. This little while of joy is, first of all, for the 
world. While Jesus Christ was being crucified, and the 
Christian Church was weeping, the world was howling and 
rejoicing; and so this world is going on, having a little 
joy while sin is reigning, and while Christians are suffer- 
ing. What made the world rejoice while Jesus was being 
crucified? Because never in the history of the world did 
the devil reign as he did on that day. It was when Satan 
sat on his highest throne that the men were casting lots 
and gambling at the foot of the cross; it was in that day, 
according to the Psalmist, that they thrust out their 
tongues at the dying Savior; it was on that day that the 
Sanhedrin rejoiced; it was on that day that the civil court 
rejoiced; it was on that day that the world said: "Now 
He is out of the way"; — and so we find that for a very 
short while sin was reigning, and the world was having 
its joy; and so it is to-day yet. Oh! there is a certain 
amount of joy in yielding to lust; there is a certain amount 
of joy in letting the flesh rule. I am sure that many a time 
you have said in your own heart, I wish that God were 
not so strict with His holy law; I wish that I could com- 
mit this sin, and be called all right ; I wish that I could com- 
mit other crimes and call them all right, and oh ! how gladly 
you would have given the reins to flesh, to lust, and have 
said, Come on, let us eat, drink and be merry; let us have 
a good time for a little while. A little while, yes, the 
world has certain pleasures for a little while — while sin 
is reigning, and while Christians are suffering. 

It did not hurt the world to see John's heart broken: 



394 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

it did not hurt the world to see poor Mary standing be- 
fore the cross, weeping before her Son; it did not hurt the 
world to see the Church of God driven with its face down 
in the dust; it never has hurt the world to see the fires 
kindled to burn the martyrs of old. While Eome was burn- 
ing Nero played the violin; while Christians were being 
torn asunder by wild beasts, and destroyed by fires, then 
it was that the world was rejoicing. My friends, when the 
joy of one heart must be the sorrow of others, oh! what a 
sad joy that is. 

Yes the world will have joy in this life a little while, 
and so will the Christian. As I said a while ago, Chris- 
tians are not the saddest people in the world — they are 
the happiest. Jubilate Sunday! Do you know the child 
of God should be the happiest man on earth? There is 
no happier 'man on any stage than your pastor ; there is 
no happier man in the world to-day than your pastor; and 
there can be no happier man on earth, I care not how long 
it stands, than a true servant of God, let him be who he 
is. 

This joy of the child of God is born, and this joy grows. 
"Verily, verily, I say unto you, that ye shall weep and 
lament, but the world shall rejoice; and ye shall be sor- 
rowful, but your sorrow shall be turned into joy. A woman 
when she is in travail hath sorrow, because her hour is 
come; but as soon as she is delivered of the child, she 
remembereth no more the anguish, for joy that a man is 
born into the world." 

I told you a while ago that there is sorrow in this 
world for the Christian while he is repenting, but in a 
little while the man that repents finds out that Jesus 
Christ died on Calvary for his sins; a light shines into 
his soul, that a man is justified by faith, without the deeds 
of the law; that Jesus Christ said, "Him that cometh unto 
Me, I will in no wise cast out"; he hears a voice, "As I 
live, saith the Lord, I have no pleasure in the death of the 
wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live"; 
he hears a wooing voice from the cross — "God so loved 
the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoso- 
ever believeth on Him shall not perish, but have everlast- 



THIRD SUNDAY AFTER EASIER. 395 

ing life"; he hears a promise — "He that believeth and is 
baptized shall be saved/ 1 and the man in travail, like a 
mother, rinds in his own heart a new born babe — a new 
life born from on high — a child of God, and there is a joy 
in that heart that never was there before. Tell me not, 
my friends, that there is not a new birth. As little as a 
man can see this world before he is born from his mother's 
womb, just so little can he see the heavenly home until 
he is born again. "Except a man be born of w T ater and 
the Spirit, he shall not enter the kingdom of heaven." That 
is the real joy of a child of God. Just as the mother, in 
sorrow for weeks, and in great sorrow, all at once beholds 
a dear little child, a man born into the world, and presses 
it to her bosom with a love that we men know nothing 
about, just so there is a love and a new birth in the child 
of God that worldlings know nothing about. The world 
says, Come on, let us eat, drink and be merry, and have a 
good time. The child of God goes down into his closet, 
alone with his God, and says, I am having the best time in 
the world. The worldling knows nothing about it. It is 
the joy of a mother that looks into the face of her new 
born babe. And this joy grows. The little child on its 
mother's breast, is looked at, not only as an infant, but 
she begins to think of that little child after a while taking 
care of mother; she thinks of that little child and its 
possibilities; she can see in a moment's time that little 
child in the pulpit or at the bar, or on some high stage 
in the world, leading the world in the right direction, lead- 
ing souls heavenward; she can see that little child w^ith 
brawny arms and calloused • hands bringing bread to 
mother. In other words, the mother sees in that little 
child, the man, and that is the reason the Savior said, "A 
woman when she is in travail hath sorrow, because her 
hour is come, but as soon as she is delivered of the child, 
she remembereth no more the anguish, for joy that a man 
is born into world." She can not think of that little babe 
as simply a babe; she looks beyond that and sees him as 
a mighty power in this world, for good. And so the Chris- 
tian not only has the little joy in this life of being a child, 
not only of being born a child of God, but of a growing 



396 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

child. He now goes to the Word of God and sees a dif- 
ferent Bible from the one he saw before. Before he was 
born again he thought of the old, musty Bible; he thought 
it was very good for old preachers and a few silly women; 
but now he begins to look in that Book, and finds proph- 
ecies concerning a coming Savior; he reads in the evangel- 
ists of the Savior that has come; he reads the epistles of 
Paul, of James, and of Peter, and of John, and there is a new 
life growing in him; he sees things he never saw before; it 
is the most interesting Book in the world, and he wonders 
why it is that any man on earth can be so blind as to have 
had that Book in his house and never read it; as to have 
been in his own home a dwarf, not growing; and he be- 
gins to grow; he now sees things he never saw before; he 
sees truths he never saw before, and his soul begins to ex- 
pand, and he is growing — growing in grace — growing 
into a spiritual man — a giant, in the name of God, — and 
so his joy is great, even a little while. 

2. A little while and a long while! We find that this 
joy goes on over into eternity — a long while- — forever! 
Here we have to dismiss the devil and his angels, for he 
will have no joy # in eternity. Now there is a long, long 
while, where joy shall be for God and His holy angels, and 
for His saints. Oh! the joy of God at the consummation 
of all things, when the judgment shall have passed, and 
when the gates of eternity have been thrown open, and 
when we shall all stand in His presence, He with His Tri- 
une persons, He with all His holy angels, He with all His 
saints, there must be joy in the heart of God forever and 
ever! 

And this joy will not only be for a long while for the 
angels, but will be a long, long, long while for all the saints, 
no difference whether their sorrow or joy was long or 
short in this world, — yes, the joy of the children of God 
on that great day. We are told by the Apostle Paul, who 
had risen to the third heaven, that there are things up 
there that we cannot speak of on earth. Jesus said, "I go 
to prepare a place for you, and then I will come again, 
and I will take you unto Myself, that where I am, there 
ye may be also." Oh! what joy that will be, when we shall 



THIRD SUNDAY AFTER EASTER. 31)7 

stand face to face in the presence of our God, when there 
shall be no sickness any more, when there shall be no 
death any more, when there shall be no pain any more, 
when there shall be no hounds of hell after us any 
more, when there shall be no more ungodly slanders 
about us any more, when all things have been made 
right in that great last assize above, when the world with 
all its short joy and short sorrow is past, and we shall for- 
ever and ever be in the presence of our God, who so loved 
us, that we cannot but see and live, and proclaim it 
abroad. 

Now, in conclusion, let me impress one thought upon 
you, and that is that in a very little while we must all 
decide our very long while. In a very little while our 
work on earth will be done. I sometimes wonder why it is 
that even Christians can be so unkind as to say unkind 
things about each other — so unkind as to treat each other 
unkindly; I wonder how it can be, when we stop to think 
of the little while that we have to be here. If I were to 
drop dead this morning in this pulpit, there are some 
people in this congregation that would be sorry for what 
they have said; if 3 T ou were to leave this world this week, 
there are some in this church that would be sorry for what 
they have said, and for what they have done, and yet there 
isn't one of us that has the assurance that we will ever 
meet in the First Lutheran Church again. In a very little 
while you and I must decide a great long while. No word 
was ever spoken that will die; no deed was ever done that 
shall not live. What we say and what we do, and what we 
think, are eternal; therefore Jesus said you must give ac- 
count for every idle word. Oh ! what an account I must give 
on that great Judgment Day, and what an account you must 
give on that great Judgment Day ! Oh ! there is a time com- 
ing when we need not pray; now is the time to call upon 
God, that He may show us the right way to live, that He 
may give us a saving faith, that He may give us a confi- 
dence and a faithfulness that will help us to remain faith- 
ful until death, that we may receive the crown of eternal 
life; then in a little while you and I will decide a long 
while. Before long you and I will settle it forever as to 






398 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

where we are to spend eternity, and inasmuch as I am not 
sure that we will ever be together again as we meet this 
morning, I urge you right now to flee as poor sinners to 
Christ. It was out along the hills of Sodom and Gomorrah 
that the angel told Lot to escape for his life, and this morn- 
ing I lead you out of the sins of darkness, and out of the 
Sodom and Gomorrah of an ungodly life, I lead you to 
Calvary's hill, and say, with all the power and love that 
God can pour into my heart, Escape for your life, and flee 
to Jesus Christ, the only Savior of the world! He that be- 
lieveth and is baptized shall be saved. Escape for your 
life! — the little while and the long while will soon be 
decided forever. 

PRAYER. 

O God, our Heavenly Father, we came before Thee in this morning hour 
with thankful hearts that in the little while of our lives we have heard so 
many blessed truths out of Thy Bible ; we thank Thee that we have, in the 
travail of our own souls, been born like a new child in the world; and we 
thank Thee for the childhood and the manhood of that spiritual growth, 
which Thou hast given us day by day. We pray Thee, O God, that the bread 
that has been handed out in Thy name this morning, may be to their souls, 
as it really is, the Bread of Life. We pray Thee that no one in this house 
may go out of these doors to-day without entering the door of which Jesus 
said, "I am the door, and by Me if any man enter in, he shall be saved, and 
shall go in and out, and find pasture." O Lord, our God, give a special 
blessing to our own members of this church, to all the dear little children, 
to the friends who may be visiting here to-day; bless them all with a 'heav- 
enly blessing. Do Thou impress upon our minds from to-day until 
death these two great thoughts, a little while and a long while, and help us 
in this little while to do all that can be done for the long while. O Lord, 
we thank Thee for an eternity that never ends ; we thank Thee for a home 
beyond, prepared for man; we thank Thee for a redemption that has been 
wrought for all mankind ; we thank Thee for the means of grace through 
which the Holy Spirit calls, and gathers, enlightens and sanctifies us ; we 
thank Thee for Thy Church, resting on the Rock of Ages; we thank Thee 
for the ministry that daily calls us to repentance. And now go with us this 
afternoon, and, if it be Thy will, bring us back to the house of God to- 
night. Go with us to our respective homes, and may the influence of the 
morning hour be felt in all eternity. We ask it in the name of Jesus, who 
taught us to pray : 

Our Father, who art in heaven : Hallowed be Thy name ; Thy kingdom 
come; Thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven. Give us, this day, our 
daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass 
against us. Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For Thine 
is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever and ever. Amen. 



FOURTH SUNDAY AFTER EASTER. 



THE TRUTH MUST BE TOLD. 



John 16: 5-15. 

ii-*~% UT now I go My way to Him that sent Me; and none of you ask- 
J^X eth Me, Whither goest Thou? But because I have said these 
^-P things unto you, sorrow hath rilled your heart. Nevertheless, I 
tell you the truth; It is expedient for you that I go away; for if I go not 
away, the Comforter will not come unto you; but if I depart, I will send 
Him unto you. And when He is come He will reprove the world of sin, 
and of righteousness and of judgment: of sin, because they believe not on 
Me; of righteousness, because I go to My Father, and ye see Me no more; 
of Judgment, because the prince of this world is judged. I have yet many 
things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now. Howbeit, when He, 
the Spirit of truth, is come, He will guide you into all truth, for He shall 
not speak of Himself; but whatsoever He shall hear, that shall He speak; 
and He will show you things to come. He shall glorify Me; for He shall 
receive of Mine, and shall show it unto you. All things that the Father 
hath are mine; therefore said I, that He shall take of Mine, and shall show 
it unto you." 

Sanctify us, O Lord, through Thy Truth; 
Thy Word is truth. Amen. 



Dear Christian Friends: — 

We are told by the Savior that Satan abode not in the 
truth, and there is no truth in him. From these words we 
gather the great fact that Satan lies, and does nothing else 
than lie; he cannot tell the truth, for the truth abode not in 
him, and there is none in him; it is, therefore, one of the 
first principles of true Christianity to know that our enemy 
is a liar from the beginning, and it follows that just be- 
cause Satan cannot tell the truth that his children do not 
want the truth. Let me quote you a few passages of Scrip- 
ture: 1 Cor. 2:14: "But the natural man receiveth not the 
things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishnees unto 

399 



400 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

him; neither can he know them, because they are spirit- 
ually discerned." Eph. 4:18: "Having the understanding 
darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the 
ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their 
heart." Eom. 8:7: "Because the carnal mind is enmity 
against God, for it is not subject to the law of God, neither 
indeed can be." From these words, and many others which 
I might quote, we learn this great truth: that the natural 
man is spiritually dead. We might, therefore, just as well 
expect the dead to rise out in yonder cemetery and come to 
God's house and hear His Word as to expect people who 
are naturally spiritually dead to run after the Church of 
God to hear these great truths. No, the natural man not 
only does not have the truth, but he does not want it. That 
is the reason, too, that people who begin to lead bad lives 
do not want to come to church any more. We might just 
as well expect a thief to go out with electric lights all 
around him at night, to steal, as to expect a bad man to 
want to hear the Gospel. 

This leads us a step further, and we discover not only 
that the natural man does not want the truth, but that the 
real child of God does want the truth; he is looking for it; 
he is searching for it; he is praying for it; and, just as the 
child of Satan does not want the truth, because his father 
cannot tell it, just so the child of God does not want the truth, 
because his Father can do nothing else than tell it. For 
that reason the Apostle Paul wrote to the Thessalonians, 
of God, saying, "He cannot lie." It is just as impossible 
for God to lie as it is for Satan to tell the truth. We find 
this great secret of the impossibility of God's lying in the 
words of our text this morning, when He says, "Neverthe- 
less, I will tell you the truth." What else could He do? 
Jesus said: "I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life, and 
no man cometh to the Father but by Me." How could the 
Truth tell anything but the truth? May the Holy Spirit 
this morning guide us, and prepare us for the message: 



FOURTH SUNDAY AFTER EASTER. 401 



THE TRUTH MUST BE TOLD. 

I. The very first truth that must be told is this: We are 
entirely too ignorant of what trouble is. 

1. We make troubles where there are none, and where 
there are real troubles, we fail to see them. How little we 
know about trouble. "But now I go My way to Him that 
sent Me, and none of you asketh Me, W T hither goest Thou? 
But because I have said these things unto you, sorrow hath 
filled your heart." Those poor disciples were in great 
trouble that day, but the reason of it was that they did not 
understand what trouble is, and we have the same trouble 
to-day yet. We fail to see troubles where we ought to see 
them, and we make troubles where there are none at all. 
How often, I say, we make troubles where there are none. 
Some one, perhaps, may not like you for some reason or 
other, and you hear this, and you go home, and you are in 
great trouble. How can you help it if some one does not 
like you, and, if you cannot help it, what is the use to 
bother your head about it? The Lord Jesus Christ was 
not loved by everybody; in fact, there were very few people 
that did love Him; they mocked Him; they scourged Him; 
they spit in His face; they drove nails through His hands 
and through His feet; they drove the sword into His breast 
and into His heart. Have the people ever treated you any 
w^orse than they did Jesus Christ? The Apostle Paul, in 
telling us of the wonderful things he might boast of, men- 
tioned the very things that some people would call trouble; 
Paul boasted of them. How can you help if somebody 
does not love you for some reason? 

Then, again, it may be that your great trouble is that 
you have lost some money; you have had financial distress. 
Pray tell me, isn't that a little thing to bother yourself 
about? There are people all around us that might lose a 
thousand dollars, and eat just as big a supper as they ever 
ate before; eat just as many meals as they ever did before; 
wear one suit of clothing, just as they did before; and, when 
they come to die, leave just one thousand dollars less be- 
hind. What is the use to bother about that? What use 
to make trouble where there is none? 
26 



402 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

Or, possibly, Providential sickness. People think we 
have trouble in the home. Why? Because mother is sick, 
or because father is sick, or because the little boy is a crip- 
ple, or because the little girl has this affliction or that afflic- 
tion. Did you bring that affliction on? Did you order that 
sickness? Is there no Great Physician in the world that 
could heal your father or your mother, or could heal your 
boy or your girl? Is all your worrying and troubling go- 
ing to make that boy well? If you cannot help it ; what is 
the use to bother your head about it? 

What is the use to have sorrow where there is none? 
The truth must be told. Perhaps death comes into the 
family; perhaps the very one who provides the bread lies 
down cold in death; perhaps the dear mother lies before us. 
Oh, what a blow! Yes. Trouble for us Christians — 
trouble for heathen. But, my friends, is it not possible 
that we can have enough faith in God to know that He 
knows better than we do when to take mother out of the 
world? Is it possible that we cannot trust the Lord God in 
our families? Is it possible that we cannot understand, 
once and forever, that every father must die some time, 
and every mother must die some time, and that the little 
boy and the little girl that are baptized in the name of the 
Father, Son and Holy Ghost, and are taken home before the 
trials and temptations of this life come, have got a grand 
jubilee over on the other side? That ought to make the 
children of God sing by the side of their remains : "Praise 
God, from whom all blessings flow: praise Him all crea- 
tures here below: praise Him above, ye heavenly host: 
praise Father, Son and Holy Ghost." I do not see one bit 
of trouble about death. The truth must be told. Preach- 
ers have driven congregations to infidelity by their actions 
in time of death. Professed Christians have given heathen 
a chance to boast against the Christian, just because of 
their lack of faith in the true and living God. "There is a 
Providence that shapes our ends." There is a God who 
knows the sparrows, Hye of which are sold for two far- 
things. There is a God who knows exactly how many 
hairs you have on your head. There is a God who knows 
exactly what is best in my home and yours, and oh, for a 



FOURTH SUNDAY AFTER FASTER. 403 

faith that can say: "My God, what Thou doest is well 
done." No trouble ; no trouble. The truth must be told. 

2. Then, on the other hand, we sometimes fail to find 
troubles where Ave ought to find them. I do not believe 
it is troubling some congregations one bit about their un- 
godly preachers; their worldly preachers, who are finding 
fault even with the Bible. It would even seem that there 
are some people that would pay a big price to get a pro- 
fessed minister of the Gospel to stand up and find fault 
with Moses, to find fault with Daniel, to find fault with 
the Inspired Word of God; it seems as though there are 
many people that would even like to have a preacher that 
would be just as worldly as he possibly could be, in order 
that they might have comfort to go on and serve the 
devil themselves. How many people do not care whether 
they pay their debt to God or not; that do not care whether 
they pay their debt to their fellow-men or not! Do you 
not hear God saying, "Render unto Csesar the things that 
are Ceasar's, and to God the things that are God's?" If I 
were a member of a Christian Church and could spend 
money for excursions, and could spend money for soft 
drinks, or some that are not so soft; if I were a professed 
Christian, and had money for all kinds of style, and for 
everything that is worldly, and then had to have my church 
book come out, with the credit of only about half a cent a 
day, or nothing to carry on God's kingdom on earth, I 
would go home and trouble myself a little; but the great 
truth is this, we do not trouble ourselves about the things 
we ought to trouble ourselves about, and the things we 
ought not to trouble ourselves about we do trouble our- 
selves about. These are truths that must be told. 

We are just about to get ready to cancel the debt of 
the First Lutheran Church, and I am already hearing peo- 
ple say, "If I give three dollars, it will be done." No, it 
will not. It will not be done with a little three dollars. 
There are twenty-nine hundred dollars .that must be raised 
in four weeks from to-day, if this church is to be free of 
debt, and that does mean that every member and ever 
person ought not only to give all they can, but to give until 
they feel it. I am not making a plea to the widow; I am 



404 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

not making a plea to the woman that has got to earn her 
money and her bread for a drunken, good-for-nothing hus- 
band, or possibly for a large family, and almost starves 
herself, but I am making a plea for every man that is a 
genuine man, for every woman that is spending her money 
foolishly, to make a sacrifice once, to give glory to God, to 
cancel the debt of this church, and henceforth keep your 
debt to the church paid. You have never done the one- 
fifteenth part of your share toward the synodical fund. A 
year ago some of you looked at me as if you thought and 
wondered if I were going to be true and loyal to our synod. 
I am more loyal to your synod than you are yourselves. 
Some of you are very disloyal to your synod; some of you 
have never raised a dollar for the carrying on of your mis- 
sionary work; some of you have never raised a cent of 
money for the benevolent work of the church; some of you 
have never done anything for the establishing of homes for 
the aged people, and every church ought to take care of its 
own poor. There is some work to be done, and if we 
would pay God what we owe, and if we would pay man 
what we owe, then, my friends, we would get rid of some 
troubles that are already not troubling some people. 

We owe something to our fellow-men; we owe some- 
thing to the salvation of the souls of the world. God says 
of Christians, that they are the light of the world. But 
what kind of light is it, if you put it under a bushel? 
What kind of light is it if you never let it shine, and never 
try to bring anybody to the Lord Jesus Christ? 

What kind of light is it if you go on and live and never 
care whether the world hears of Christ or not? The best 
thing that could happen to some of us would be to put us 
in a heathen land, and keep us there for three years until 
we began to learn what the Church of God is worth; until 
we began to learn what the ministry is worth; until we 
began to learn what the public schools are worth; until we 
began to learn what salvation is worth; until we began to 
learn what the kingdom of God has done for us. Oh! let 
us begin to find troubles where we have not been finding 
them, and get rid of some of the things that have been 
troubling us. The truth must be told! 



FOURTH SUNDAY AFTER EASTER. 405 

II. If we had our own way to escape troubles, we 
should ruin the whole world. These disciples were in 
great trouble, and the trouble was that Jesus was going 
away from them, and they wanted Him to stay; but Jesus 
tells them, I must tell you the truth; if I were to stay here, 
it would be the ruin of the whole world. I shall carry that 
thought out more fully hence, but let me say right here, if 
you and I had our own way to get rid of our troubles, we 
should ruin the whole world. 

1. Are we any better than Adam and Eve were? I 
think not. Go back with me this morning to that beauti- 
ful paradise of Eden, where every flower bloomed before 
the face of the God who gave it, and where every flower 
threw out its aroma into the nostrils of the perfect man 
and woman; go with me back to that time when Adam and 
Eve stood in the garden of Eden, created in the very image 
of their God; go back with me to the day when they stood 
there without any sin, without any pain, without any 
death, lords of all the world beside; and let us ask our- 
selves the question, What did those two people do? What 
did they do for the world? They sinned, and, by sinning, 
they put sickness and pain into every home of the future; 
by their sin they dug every grave that has ever been dug; 
by their sin they lit the fires of every persecution that ever 
raged; by their sin they touched off the cannon of every 
war; by their sin they drove the sword in to the hilt; by 
their sin they opened the way to hell, and by their sin they 
shut the gates of heaven! Oh! my friends, if the first two 
parents in the world, by having their own way, did all this, 
what would you and I do to-day if we could escape our 
troubles in our own way? 

Are we any better than those disciples were? How 
often we have longed to have been with Jesus as John was, 
and as Luke was, and as all the twelve were; they walked 
with Him for three long years; they sat at His feet day 
and night ; they heard His prayers ; they saw His miracles ; 
they heard His wonderful sermons, and it does seem to us, 
if there ever were good men on earth, it must have been 
those disciples. But lo! when Jesus announces to them 
that He is going home, they are filled with sorrow, and 



406 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

none of them says a word about how they might escape. 
Jesus accuses them of not trying to get out of their sorrow 
in the right way. "None of you asketh Me, Whither goest 
Thou?" They were in deep sorrow; they wanted Jesus to 
stay, and, if He had stayed, then what? Then the Holy 
Spirit would not have come, and if the Holy Spirit had not 
come then the poor heathen would not have been con- 
vinced of sin and of righteousness, and of judgment, and 
he would not have repented, would not have heard of God, 
and every heathen would have been lost. 

And not only is this true, but the Church of God itself 
would have suffered. In other words, if the disciples could 
have had their own way that day, they would have ruined 
the whole world, and just so you and I would do. . The 
truth must be told. We think we are not selfish; we think 
that we could just do things right if we only had control; 
but, O God, pity this world if I had control of it! God pity 
this world if you had control of it! The real truth of it is 
that every man on earth is far more selfish than he knows. 
If the Lord were to give you and me the right this day to 
escape all our troubles in our own way, we should be 
making troubles where there are none and getting out in 
our own way, and after a little if we had this right I 
should own the whole world, and own you, too, and I should 
ruin every one of you. We do not think we would, but ah! 
do not trust man; do not trust the arm of flesh. If Adam 
and Eve, in the image of their God, without a spot of sin 
on their souls, ruined and damned the whole world; if those 
twelve good men, that walked with Jesus for three long 
years, could not be trusted alone in their way, how can 
you and I be trusted in our way? The truth must be told. 
God knows what you need; God knows what I need; and, 
if I am in trouble, no one knows so well as my God how to 
lead me out, and no one knows so well as God how to lead 
you out. 

III. The truth must be told, and therefore I would 
say it is a great blessing that Jesus did not visibly stay 
here on earth. Oh, but that was a great blessing! "Nev- 
ertheless, I tell you the truth; it is expedient for you that 
I go away; for if I go not away, the Comforter will not 



FOURTH SUNDAY AFTER EASTER. 407 

come unto you; but if I depart, I will send Him unto you." 
And when we learn this great truth, that if the Holy Spirit 
had not come — and lie would not have come if Jesus had 
not ascended, and He and the Father had sent Him — then 
it would have been a calamity for the world, and a great 
calamity for the Church of God. 

1. If the Holy Spirit had not come, then the world 
never would have learned that infidelity is the damning 
sin. You can make any man know that murder is wrong; 
you can make any man understand that to commit adultery 
is not right; it is not hard to explain the law of God so that 
the people can see, when the reflection of the law in their 
own hearts corresponds with the law that God wrote with 
His own finger; it is not hard to make men know that when 
they transgress the Ten Commandments they are sinning; 
but there are thousands of people who think because they 
are infidels they are smart; they think because they find 
fault with God's Word that that is a sign of their intelli- 
gence and their great wisdom. I want to tell you that no 
human wisdom can make an infidel believe that he is a sin- 
ner; nothing in the world can convince the world of sin, 
and righteousness and judgment, but the Holy Ghost; and 
if Jesus Christ had not ascended to heaven the Holy Spirit 
would not have come on that great Pentecost, and con- 
vinced the world of sin, of righteousness and of judgment. 
And what is that sin that the Holy Spirit came to convince 
the world of? "Of sin, because they believe not on Me," 
says Christ. If Jesus Christ had remained on earth, the 
people would say, "We have a right to believe on Him if 
we want to, and, if we do not want to, it is ail right;" but 
when He ascended into heaven, and when He and the 
Father sent the Holy Spirit, with power from on high, He 
came to convince them — the word "reprove," which you 
find, means convince — overwhelmingly convince the un- 
godly world that the worst sin is unbelief in Jesus Christ. 
There is no greater sin. You may wonder why it is that 
the Lord Jesus Christ Himself, speaking of the judgment 
day, says, "He that believeth not shall be damned." Why 
didn't He say, "He that murders shall be damned;" why 
didn't He say, He that committeth ^adultery shall be 



408 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

damned ;" why didn't He say, "He that is a drunkard shall 
be damned;" why didn't He say, "He that beareth false 
witness shall be damned?" Because every other sin in the 
world is the direct fruit of unbelief in Christ. Unbelief in 
the Lord Jesus Christ begets sin in the murderer's soul; it 
calls God a liar; it cuts loose from God; it makes people 
ungodly, and there is not a sin in all the world that can- 
not be traced back to its mother — unbelief in Jesus Christ. 
In order to convince the world of this, Jesus Christ had to 
ascend into heaven, and the Holy Spirit had to come and 
give us this convincing power. I know these things are 
true, and every true Christian knows it. In my own heart 
I know that unbelief in Jesus Christ is the damning sin; 
that is the sin that is going to decide on the Judgment 
Day whether I shall forever be saved or forever be lost; 
and that is the sin that is going to decide your eternal des- 
tiny; and this is the power of the Holy Ghost. 

Another thing the world never could have learned if 
Jesus Christ had remained here, and that is that righteous- 
ness is not to be seen, but is to be received by faith. "Of 
righteousness, because I go to My Father, and ye see Me 
no more." The world thinks righteousness is in man, and 
that is the reason these false religions are all the time try- 
ing to make man believe he can make himself better. God 
pity the man that thinks he can make himself better! He 
cannot do it. There is no power in heaven that can make 
man better except the power of the Lord Jesus Christ, as 
manifested to us by the Holy Spirit. The only righteous- 
ness that will avail before God is the righteousness that is 
in Jesus Christ, not in man, and that righteousness in Jesus 
Christ is not a righteousness that can be felt with the fin- 
gers; it is not a righteousness that can be touched with the 
hands; it is not a righteousness that can be seen with the 
eye; it is a righteousness that is in the person of the Lord 
Jesus Christ, who ascended to heaven, and went beyond 
the clouds, and beyond the stars and whirling world sys- 
tems, out of the sight of man — a righteousness that we get 
by faith and not by sight. And now the world must be 
convinced of this; no man can do it; no preacher of the 
Gospel can do it; j£ * s on ty the Holy Spirit that can con- 



FOURTH SUNDAY AFTER FASTER. 401) 

vince a man of his unrighteousness and ungodliness, and 
that righteousness is in the risen Lord, the ascended Lord, 
and we get it alone by faith. That is what Paul meant 
when he said, "Therefore we conclude that man is justified 
by faith without the deeds of the law." Here is the great 
truth on which the battle of the Reformation was fought. 
If Dr. Luther had not learned that great lesson, that man 
is justified by faith without the deeds of the law, he w^ould 
not have risked his life as he did. The Church of Ronie 
would still be in her darkness, had it not been for the reve- 
lation of this great truth and its discovery. 

Then there is another truth that the world never would 
learn, were it not for the gift of the Holy Spirit, and that is 
that the judgment is bound to come, because part of it has 
already taken place. "Of judgment, because the prince of 
this world is judged." A man must be blind if the Holy 
Spirit cannot prove to him that judgments have already 
taken place, that Satan is now bound. If Satan were 
reigning as he once did, wmy would not the fires of perse- 
cution be burning in Mansfield? If Satan were not bound, 
why would he not ruin every one of us? The truth of it is, 
the Holy Spirit will convince the world that Satan has 
already been bound, and, like a mad dog, you can go to him 
and let him bite you, and you can resist him and stay away 
and he cannot harm you. A man must be blind if he does 
not know that he does not need to yield to temptation; if 
he does not know that there is a power that has already 
been tied, and that this power has been demonstrated by 
the coming of the Holy Spirit. Where are the powers that 
crucified Jesus Christ? Go from dark Calvary over to the 
Pentecostal day, when the fires were coming down from 
heaven and falling upon the disciples, and when the multi- 
tude listened to the Gospel, where but a few weeks before 
they had cried out, "Crucify Him! Crucify Him!" Where 
is the power that conquered Jerusalem on that great day? 
It is the power of the Holy Ghost — the convincing power — 
that is conquering the world. I say again, the truth must 
be told. What a great blessing it was that Jesus did not 
visibly stay here. 

2. Not only was it a blessing for the world, but for the 



410 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

Church of God. "Howbeit, when He, the Spirit of truth, is 
come, He will guide you into all truth, for He shall not 
speak of Himself; but whatsoever He shall hear, that shall 
He speak; and He will show you things to come. He shall 
glorify Me." What a blessing the coming of the Holy 
Spirit is to the Church of God. He leadeth us into all 
truth. If Jesus Christ had remained here on earth, and the 
Holy Spirit had not come, we should not have these beauti- 
ful epistles of Paul; we should not have this beautiful 
Eevelation given to John; we should not have a thousand 
truths that we now have. But the Word of God has been 
completed; the doctrines of God are pure; they have been 
translated into all known languages, and to-day the whole 
world can be brought into the truth, and the Church of 
God can take this truth, and search deeper and deeper, and 
be led into truth. People may call themselves "truth seek- 
ers," and not search the Bible, but they will never find the 
truth that way. The great wisdom, is to know how to be 
saved, and to remain saved, and to accept Jesus Christ as 
your only Savior, by the power of the Holy Spirit ; the great 
wisdom is to find out our ignorance, and to grow in grace. 
There may be some foolish Christians that think they know 
it all; there may be some who think they need no further 
instruction; there are some people who are always looking 
back, and saying, "This is the way we had it," and "That is 
the way we had it." Thank God, we want the Christian 
Church that says, "Let us go forward." I do hope that, after 
I am dead, men will rise that will find truths that I never 
found. I do hope the Church of God is willing to go on, 
learning more and more. Jesus said, "I go to prepare a 
place for you, and I will come again, and receive you unto 
Myself, that where I am there ye may be also." Jesus 
Christ goes on ahead, and says, "Come on," and let us go 
on, forward; for He leads us into all truth, not only into 
some truths. 

And this truth is not only the great fact that the Bible 
is the Word of God, but that all that the Holy Spirit tells 
us is revealed in the Book. "He will guide you into all 
truth, for He shall not speak of Himself, but whatsoever 
He shall hear, that shall He speak." We hear of a great 



FOURTH SUNDAY AFTER EASTER. 411 

many people that call themselves Christians telling- us of 
the wonderful revelations they have received from God, 
outside of the Bible. Yes — revealed nonsense! Never a 
man since the days of the apostles ever received revelations 
from heaven, outside of God's Book. Yet there may be 
people who think they are receiving revelations. The devil 
loves to give such revelations to such people, but I would 
have you understand that Jesus said, I will send you the 
Holy Spirit, and He is to remind you of things that I have 
spoken; He is not to speak the things Himself, but the 
things that I tell Him; and Jesus says in the last chap- 
ter of the Bible, that this Book is now completed, and noth- 
ing shall be added to it, and nothing taken from it. So, then, 
I say the Holy Spirit leaMs the Church of God into the re- 
vealed truth and into complete truth. 

And, finally, we learn this great lesson, that we also 
shall take home, that we must give all the glory to 
Christ. "He shall glorify Me, for He shall receive of 
Mine and shall show it unto you. All things that the 
Father hath are mine; therefore, said I, that He shall take 
of Mine, and shall show it unto you." In other words, 
when the Holy Spirit comes to man, He holds up Christ, 
and nothing but Christ; Christ for everybody, and Christ 
always, for all souls and all times. All glory to Jesus 
Christ, is the message of the Holy Spirit. 

Now you can understand why it is that a Christian, a 
true Christian, cannot enjoy what the world enjoys. The 
world wants to give glory to self. There used to be a time 
when I could enjoy a good voice, no difference what people 
sang; there was a time when I loved to see people do any- 
thing that showed accomplishment, no difference what 
it was, but the more I learned this great lesson, that 
Jesus should have all the glory, the more disgusting be- 
came the things that once were a pleasure to me. A man 
preaches the Gospel, and you can read in his very face: 
Listen what a wonderful preacher I am! God is disgusted. 
Every Christian despises him. All glory to Jesus Christ! 
When two men from America went over to London to hear 
two of the greatest preachers of the last century, they first 
went into that great temple and listened to Parker; they 



412 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

heard those long periodic sentences; they listened to a man 
that made a great demonstration; and then, when they 
walked out, one said to the other, "What a great man 
Parker is!" The next Sunday they went to that old tab- 
ernacle, and listened to another man, Charles Spurgeon. 
He began to hold up before them the grea,t Savior on Cal- 
vary; he hid himself behind the cross, and put Jesus in 
front of him; and when those two men walked out of that 
tabernacle that day, one said to the other, "What a great 
Savior!" There you have the .difference between the two 
men. The one held up to the world the great Savior; the 
other, whether consciously or unconsciously, held up be- 
fore them the great Parker. The one is disgusting; the 
other is a power. When you he?ir a man, no difference 
what his gifts may be, call attention only to self, he is dis- 
gusting; but when he gives all the glory to God, what a 
power! Oh! I wish to-day that every man that has a 
voice to sing would hide himself behind that voice, and use 
it alone for the glory of Jesus. What a power! Oh! that 
every minister of the Gospel would forget all about his 
own selfishness, and hold up to a dying, perishing world 
Jesus Christ only — but this can only be done by the power 
of the Holy Spirit. Pentecost is coming. Oh! let us all 
pray for the coming of the Holy Ghost. Let us once set 
apart the days of our worship for the coming of the Holy 
Spirit. When since the days of the apostles did men and 
women get together, and wait ten days for the coming of 
the Holy Ghost, as they did in those days? We are work- 
ing on, plodding on in our daily labor, and when Pentecost 
comes we come into the Church of God without a prayer, 
and wonder why the fire from on high doesn't come. In 
God's name, how could it come? Will Ave never learn the 
great truth that must be told, that the going of Christ to 
heaven, with the sending of the Holy Spirit, has a blessing 
to the world, to convince it of sin, of righteousness and of 
judgment ; a blessing to the Church to lead it into truth, the 
revealed truth, and into constant truth, that will give all 
glory to the only Savior, Jesus Christ? May these words 
lead us close to the Master this morning, is my prayer. 
Amen. 



FOURTH SUNDAY AFTER EASTER, 413 



PRAYER. 

O God, our Heavenly Father : We thank Thee for this morning's hour, 
and for this service of Thine, and for this message of Thine, and the Holy 
Spirit. We pray Thee, O God, that Thou wilt send Thy Spirit from on 
high, with power, through Thy means of grace, to convince the world of 
the sin, that they do not believe on Jesus Christ; to convince the world of 
righteousness, which lies alone in the person of the ascended Lord ; to con- 
vince the world of judgment to come, because it has already in part taken 
place. We pray Thee that Thou wilt lead Thy Church on earth into all 
truth, into the revealed truth, and into the truth that is no more to be added 
to, nor taken from, but stands, with all glory to Jesus Christ, who lived and 
died for us; who ascended into heaven, and is coming again to judge the 
quick and the dead. We ask all these blessings in the name of the Father, 
and the Son, and the Holy Ghost — in the name of Jesus, who taught us 
to pray: 

Our Father, who art in heaven: Hallowed be Thy name; Thy kingdom 
come; Thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven. Give us, this day, our- 
daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass 
against us. Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For Thine 
is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever and ever. Amen. 



FIFTH SUNDAY AFTER EASTER. 



THE KING'S KEY. 



V 



John 16: 23-30. 

41 1( % ^ ERILY, verily, I say unto you, Whatsoever ye shall ask the Father 
in My name, He will give it you. Hitherto have ye asked nothing 
in My name: ask, and ye shall receive, that your joy may be full. 
These things have I spoken unto you in proverbs; but the time cometh, 
when I shall no more speak unto you in proverbs, but I shall show you 
plainly of the Father. At that day ye shall ask in My name : and I say 
not unto you, that I will pray the Father for you: for the Father Himself 
loveth you because ye have loved Me, and have believed that I came out 
from God. I came forth from the Father, and am come into the world : 
again, I leave the world, and go to the Father. His disciples said unto 
Him, Lo, now speakest Thou plainly, and speakest no proverb. Now are 
we sure that Thou knowest all things, and needest not that any man should 
ask Thee : by this we believe that Thou earnest forth from God." 

Sanctify us, O Lord, through Thy Truth ; 
Thy Word is truth. Amen. 



Dear Christian Friends : — 

The prophet, mentioning the coming of Christ, said, "His 
name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, the Mighty God, 
the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace." The first of 
those beautiful names is Wonderful, and surely Jesus Christ 
was wonderful. When we stop to think that that little Babe 
lying in Bethlehem's crib was the King of Power, it is won- 
derful — wonderful that a little child, lying in the hands 
of its mother, should hold the universe on the palms of His 
hands — it is too wonderful for any man to comprehend ! 
Jesus Christ is King of Power. The last thing that He said 
when He ascended to heaven was, "All power is given Me in 
heaven and on earth." 

414 



FIFTH SUNDAY AFTER EASTER. 415 

lie is not only King of Power, but He is also King of 
Grace. He is ruling in His Church. There may be many 
people who think that the Church of God is going backward, 
or must go down, but remember that before there were mil- 
lions of Christians in the world, Jesus Christ said to Peter, 
"Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build My Church, 
and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it." The very 
gates of hell have been opened more than once to destroy 
the Church. When those one hundred and eighty-five mil- 
lions of people were killed in the first three centuries of the 
Christian era, the gates of hell were open ; in the days of the 
inquisition the very gates of hell were open; in the days of 
ralationism the very gates of hell were open, and the powers 
of hell have tried time and again to destroy the Church of 
God, but she stands, because Jesus Christ, the Wonderful, is 
King of that Church. 

Not only is He King of Grace, but He is also the King of 
Glory. Every knee shall bow before Him in heaven and on 
earth, and under the earth. God the Father acknowledged 
that His Son should have dominion over all things. When 
this Great King rode into Jerusalem six days before He was 
crucified, and was received as such by the children and by 
the multitude that sang "Hosanna in the Highest" we find 
that in a very short time after that it looks as though He 
were not King, when He is hanging on the cross, it look's 
as though the King were dead and had lost His power; 
when He is carried into the tomb of Joseph of Arimathsea, 
and the stone is rolled before that opening and is sealed 
with the king's seal, and the Roman guard placed around 
that tomb, it looks as if He were locked in there, and never 
could get out. Where is the key that can now unlock the 
tomb, with the seal of the Roman government upon it, and 
with the Roman guard around it? Oh! my friends, the 
key was inside of that tomb ! The key was the risen Christ 
within that tomb! As the swan sings its most beautiful 
song when it is dying, so the Lord Jesus Christ, in these 
last chapters which we- have been reading, gave forth 
that dying song full of sweet treasures. Just before this 
wonderful promise, "Verily, verily, I say unto you, Whatso- 
ever ye shall ask the Father in My name, He will give it to 



410 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

you/' He had told us about the long while and the 
little while of the suffering and the joy in this world 
and in eternity. He had told His disciples that for 
a little while they would be in sorrow, but He would 
come again, and then they should rejoice, and their joy 
no man could take from them. He was referring to 
that key that would unlock the tomb, not from the out- 
side, but from the inside, when the Son of God should conquer 
death, and the stone should be rolled away, and the risen 
Lord should stand forth, the Key of the great King! I call 
your attention to the resurrection of Jesus Christ, 

THE KING'S KEY. 

•I. It unlocks the head. 
II. It unlocks the heart. 
III. It unlocks heaven. 

I. This key of the resurrection, the King's Key, I say, un- 
locks the head. 

1. These disciples had been in great trouble. As we 
heard last Sunday, they were worried about the Savior's 
going away ; they could not understand what He meant 
when He said, "A little while and ye shall not see Me, and 
again, a little while and ye shall see Me," but at last He told 
them plainly that He was going to die, and would rise again 
on the third day, and then they said, "Now these proverbs 
are plain; now we understand Thee." Now the head is 
unlocked. In other words, my friends, there is nothing in 
all the world that so unlocks the heads of men as the resur- 
rection of Jesus Christ. How many people there are that 
seem to think if they cannot fathom everything in the Bible, 
that therefore they will have nothing to do with that Bible. 
What nonsense! Fathom everything in the Bible? When- 
ever you can take the Rocky Mountains and put them inside 
of a tin cup ; whenever you can take the Atlantic Ocean and 
put it inside of a sea shell ; whenever you can take the great 
mountains of the world and hold them in the palm of your 
hand, then you may come and talk to me about putting God 
inside of your little brain. One of the first lessons that we 
must all learn is this, that God is too great to be compre- 



FIFTH SUNDAY AFTER FASTER. 417 

hended ; one of the first lessons that you and I must learn is 
that the resurrection of Jesus Christ is one of the most won- 
derful things that ever took place in the world, and it did 
take plate, and the world knows it, and no man understands 
it, and yet this great fact is the key that unlocks the brain 
— it is the key that unlocks the head ; it is the key that makes 
me understand that this Book is God's Word. If I could 
comprehend that Book I would say it is not a revelation from 
heaven, but there are things in this Book that all the wisdom 
in the world cannot fathom. Who gave us this wisdom? 
The Lord our God. And just as the resurrection is a fact, 
whether we understand it or not, so the birth of Jesus Christ 
from the virgin Mary is a fact, whether we understand it or 
not: just so the forgiveness of sins through faith in Jesus 
Christ is a fact, whether we understand it or not; just so re- 
generation by Holy Baptism is a fact, whether we under- 
stand it or not; just so the Lord Jesus Christ is present in 
the Holy Supper, whether we understand it or not. It 
doesn't make any difference whether you understand it or 
not, when God speaks, He means it, and what He says is 
true, and one of the great things you and I must learn 
is that the Key of the King is the only thing that will ever 
unlock a stubborn brain; it is the only thing that will ever 
unlock the heads of men, and when they are unlocked, we 
will admit that the Bible is God's Word. 

2. And we will admit, furthermore, that the Bible is the 
best interpreter of itself. Why is that so many of you have 
so much difficulty about this place in the Bible, or that? It 
is because you know nothing about the other places in the 
Bible. When you just go to a certain chapter and read a cer- 
tain verse, and say, "I don't understand how that can be so," 
read what goes before it, read what follows it — read the Old 
Testament in the light of the New, and read the New Testa- 
ment in the light of the Old, and let this Book interpret 
itself, and it becomes a wonderful Book, full of great knowl- 
edge, and the head unlocks more and more, so that at last you 
can say, as the disciples said, to Jesus — "His disciples said 
unto Him, Lo, now speakest Thou plainly, and speakest no 
proverb. Now are we sure that Thou knowest all things, 



418 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

and needest not that any man should ask Thee : by this we 
believe that Thou earnest forth from God." 

3. We not only learn thereby that the Bible interprets 
itself, but when our heads are rightly unlocked, we also find 
out that the Apostles' Creed is the sum and substance of the 
Christian faith as revealed in this Word of God. I do not 
know how even the Lord Jesus Christ could have summed up 
the Apostle's Creed in more beautiful words than He does in 
the 28th verse of my text : "I came forth from the Father, 
and am come into the world : again, I leave the world, and go 
to the Father." Let me put the Apostles' Creed into that 
verse, "I believe in God the Father Almighty, maker of hea- 
ven and earth" — all that lies in these words "I came forth 
from the Father" — "And in Jesus Christ His only Son our 
Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the 
virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, 
dead and buried ; He descended into hell ; the third day He 
rose again from the dead ; He ascended into heaven, and sit- 
teth on the right hand of God the Father Almighty; from 
thence He shall come to judge the quick and the dead." Let 
me read this verse again: "I came forth from the Father, 
and am come into the world, again I leave the world and go 
to the Father." — and after a while He is coming to judge the 
quick and the dead. Just as soon as we have our brain un- 
locked, just as soon as we have our head unlocked by the 
great doctrine of the resurrection of the body of Jesus Christ, 
just so soon we will have faith. No Church on earth can 
deny any point in the Apostles' Creed, and be Christian. 
There is the platform on which the Christian Church can 
stand, and that is the platfrom that we all find by having the 
resurrection of Jesus Christ unlock our brain. 

II. This Key of the King not only unlocks the head, but 
it unlocks the heart, and when it does unlock the heart it 
finds it empty. 

1. "Verily, verily, I say unto you, Whatsoever ye shall 
ask the Father in My name, He will give it you." My name ! 
Poor, empty hearts. Hitherto they had asked nothing in 
His name, and might it not be truthfully said that there are 
many people sitting before me, some of you fifteen years old, 



FIFTH SUNDAY AFTER FASTER. 419 

some of you thirty years old, and may be some of you fifty 
years old, who have spent all your lives without being prayer- 
ful ? You have been running to and fro in this world trying 
to find fame, and if you have ever found it, you have soon lost 
it ; you have been going up and down the world trying to find 
pleasure in this or in that, thinking it would make you per- 
fectly happy. Have you ever found what you were looking 
for? Is there an emptiness in your heart that cannot be 
satisfied? You have said, If I could just be worth one thou- 
sand dollars, I would be perfectly happy. You got the thou- 
sand and you are no happier than you were. You have said, 
If I could just learn this or that, I would be perfectly happy. 
You have learned it, and you are just as contented as you 
were before. You have said, If I could just take a trip 
through certain states I would be happy. You took the trip, 
and came home just as much dissatisfied as you were before. 
You have laid down those plans to make you happy ; you have 
carried the plans out, and yet you have felt in your own soul 
that there is something wanting, a vacuum that is not satis- 
fied and cannot be filled. I can tell you what the vacuum is. 
It is the fact that hitherto you have asked nothing in Jesus' 
name. Formal prayers are nothing unless they are offered 
in the right way. When I look around and see so many peo- 
ple living worthless and ungodly lives, and willing so to live, 
I cannot help thinking, Oh! that the King's key would un- 
lock their hearts, and show them their emptiness, and fill 
them with faith. 

2. The same Lord and Savior Jesus Christ who told 
them that hitherto they had asked nothing, said, "Ask," and 
by that very command, He put something into their hearts 
that would make them ask. The Apostle Paul said, "How 
shall fhey call on Him in whom they have not believed?" 
One of the greatest mistakes in the world is for a minister 
of the Gospel to try to urge unbelievers to begin to pray, as 
if a man could pray with unbelief in his heart. The thing to 
do is to teach a man the law of God, and drive him to the 
Lord Jesus Christ that he may get faith by the Holy Spirit, 
and when he has got faith by the Holy Spirit, he will pray ; 
and that is the way that God fills the heart; He unlocks the 
brain with the key of His resurrection; He unlocks that 



420 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

man's head and goes down to his heart, unlocks it, and 
shows it its own emptiness, and begins to fill it, and by the 
word "Ask" says, Now I give you the faith to pray. 

3. When He unlocks the heart, he unlocks it for the pur- 
pose of filling it. "Hitherto have ye asked nothing in My 
name. Ask, and ye shall receive, that your joy may be full." 
Oh ! what a glorious thing it is to have the heart full of love 
to God — full of prayer to the Lord Jesus Christ, and to the 
Father, and to the Holy Spirit! Oh, for that fulness of joy 
that some people possess, and others know nothing about it ! 
I tell you, wealth can never fill the heart; amusement can 
never fill the heart. There are some people who cannot sit 
down at home and feel satisfied, because something is want- 
ing. They are running to and fro, backward and forward, 
but what they really ought to do is to get down in their clos- 
ets and begin to ask God to fill their hearts with Himself — 
fill their hearts with love to humanity — fill their hearts with 
love to God — fill their hearts with prayers that will be ut- 
tered in public and in private, a communion that is constant 
with God, an eye that is open to do kind deeds for our fellow 
men, a hand ready to do anything to help those that have 
fallen; a foot that is always willing to run for the good of 
your neighbor, and when a man's heart is filled with that kind 
of joy, unlocked, as I said, by the King's key, then he has 
reached that object for which God placed him here. 

III. When the heart is filled with joy, then the King's 
Key unlocks heaven. "Verily, verily, I say unto you, what- 
soever ye shall ask the Father in My name, He will give it 
you." 

1. There are some people in these days who think it makes 
no difference whether you go to the Jewish church of the 
Christian ; whether you have a prayer in the name of Jesus, or 
gotten up without the name of Jesus. There are so many 
people in these days so ignorant about prayer that we hardly 
know how to talk to them without fearing we are insulting 
them. The truth of it is, no prayer ever went to heaven that 
did not go in Jesus' name, it makes no difference how many 
forms you go through with. Have you never heard these 
words out of the mouth of Jesus : "I am the Way, the Truth 
and the Life, and no man cometh to the Father but by Me."?" 



FIFTH SUNDAY AFTER EASTER. 421 

What sense is there in a man's trying to go to the Father any 
other way, when there is no other way, and yet, when we 
insist upon it that children must pray in the name of Jesus, 
why, they say, "lie is a strange preacher, isn't he?" I tell 
you some prayers might just as well be silent forever, as to 
leave the name of Jesus Christ out. Some wise man looks 
up and says, How about the Lord's prayer, has that got the 
name of Jesus in it? I think so. If I put one young man 
before me whom you do not know, and I say, "Mr. So and so," 
you do not know whether he is married or single, but if I 
turn around to another and say, as I present the little boy to 
him, "Go to your father," you know who the other one is, that 
he is the father of this boy ; and when I pray and say, "Our 
Father, who art in heaven," it doesn't take much of a student 
to know He is a Father ; He has got a Son — "Our Father, 
who art in heaven." No man can pray the Lord's Prayer, 
without praying it in the name of Jesus, who taught it, and 
in the name of Jesus, whose name is in the word Father ; for 
He is the only Son of God. And I say again, that there is 
no prayer that God will ever answer, that has not the name of 
Jesus in it. 

"At that day ye shall ask in My name: and I say not 
unto you, that I will pray the Father for you." That verse 
may be understood in two ways. It may mean this, that He 
wanted to tell His disciples that He will pray for them, and 
they know it, so that He need not tell them — " . . and I 
say not unto you, that I will pray the Father for you," for you 
already know that. One thing we do know, He told them He 
was praying for them ; He told them He was their advocate, 
and He would pray to the Father. Another meaning of this 
same verse may be this, "I say not unto you that / will pray 
the Father for you" — in other words, I do not say that you 
can come to Me and tell Me to go to the Father and pray, — ■ 
in other words, if you are going to pray a prayer to be heard, 
you have got to go to the Father yourself : you have got to 
go to Him in My name, and pray to Him in My own com- 
munion. And there you have the real secret of prayer in 
the name of Jesus. Should you come to me in the name of 
my daughter and want a favor, you have got to be my daugh- 



422 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

ter, or you have got to be just like her ; that must be plain 
to every one ; you cannot come as a stranger in my house and 
ask a favor of me in the name of my child ; you must come 
as a part of my child to ask a favor in her name ; therefore, 
if you want to pray in Jesus' name, you must go to God your 
Father, accepted in the Lord Jesus Christ, by faith. God's 
Word tells us that when we are baptized into Christ, we have 
put on Christ. If I could put on your son, I could step into 
your presence and ask of you in the name of your son ; but 
I can go to Jesus, and I have put Him on by holy baptism, 
and therefore in His name, I can go to the Father, and when 
I come to the- Father He will hear me because His Son and I 
are in communion with each other. 

2. For that reason, to pray in the name of Jesus, means 
to ask only such things as Jesus would ask for. I know what 
my children will ask of me, and if you come to me and ask 
for something my children never dreamed of, I would know 
at once that you have no right to ask in the name of my chil- 
dren. If we are going to ask the Father in the name of 
Jesus Christ, we have to ask such things as Jesus Himself 
would ask for. Do not, therefore, for a single moment, think 
you can go to the Father in Jesus' name and ask for some 
Satanic thing, — you cannot do it. Do not think you can 
ask in the name of Jesus to live three hundred years. When 
did Jesus ever promise you that you could do that? If yoa 
want to pray in Jesus' name, you have to go to His Word and 
find out what He promised, and when you have the promise, 
hold it up to the Father. If you give me a check for $25.00 I 
will go to the bank, and if you have the money in your name 
I will get it, but if you have no money in the bank, no matter 
how many checks you give me, I cannot get the money. In 
other words, if you have the money there, and I go and 
simply ask the teller for it, he will say, "Where is the name 
of the owner?" and if I cannot present the name of the owner 
I cannot get it. Why cannot we have as much sense in re- 
ligion as in business? Why should we try to go up to the 
great bank of heaven and rob heaven, when Jesus Christ has 
invited us to come in His name? Therefore, let us learn 
intelligently to come to our God in prayer; let us come in 



FIFTH SUNDAY AFTER FASTER. 423 

the name of Jesus Christ, and let us ask only for such things 
as Jesus Christ would ask for us. 

3. And let us remember that when we do come to our 
Father in heaven, in the name of Jesus Christ, as I have 
explained to you, our prayers will be answered, up to the 
time that God breaks the greatest oath He ever took, up to 
the time that He breaks His own commandment. Did you 
ever find that the Lord Jesus Christ broke His Word? Did 
He ever break a promise? Did you ever find that when He 
took an oath He did not mean it? And when He stands be- 
fore His disciples, and thereby before the Church of God, and 
says, "Verily, verily, I say unto you," He can not swear by 
anything higher — "Verily, verily I say unto you that if you 
go to the Father in My name, whatsoever ye shall ask, He will 
give it to you. I do not say that I will ask the Father for you ; 
you have to go in My name and ask for yourself. I do not 
say that I will not pray for you, for you know I will. I do 
not say that I will not pray for you, for you know it, but you 
must pray in My name, and do the asking yourself, and just 
as surely as there is a God, and I am He, just so surely your 
prayers will be answered. And now, in order that you may 
understand that you have the right to pray, I say, Ask. It 
is not simply a privilege, it is a duty." There is no command- 
ment handed down on Mount Sinai, no commandment that 
came with the thundering and lightning of that great moun- 
tain, written with the finger of God alone, that is any stronger 
than God's command from heaven, which says to every man 
and to every woman, and to every son and to every daughter, . 
Ask ! I say by an oath, Ask ! I say by an oath, that if you 
ask in My name, you shall receive — whatsoever ye ask the 
Father in My name, He will give it to you. 

There you have the King's key, unlocking the head, un- 
locking the heart, unlocking heaven, making man in the name 
of God a power on earth that cannot be resisted. How often 
it has been said by godly men, "God and I are a majority!" 
I know from thousands of experiences in my own life that 
God and I are a majority. I have stood alone in this very 
pulpit when I did not know whether I had a friend in this 
city that would stand by me, but God stood by me, and he 



424 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

always will stand by us when we have the conviction that 
we have the truth of His Word. There is no power in any 
church, no power in any city, no power in any government, 
that can win the fight against the power of the Almighty 
God. Therefore, let our religion be more positive, let us be 
sure we are right and stand by it, if we die. There is power 
in God's Word. It was that which the Apostle Paul meant 
when he said, as he went to Rome — heathen Eome — un- 
godly Rome — Rome with her pleasures, ready to put him 
down to death, "I am not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ, 
for it is the power of God." And he went to Rome, and, with 
rattling chains, he wrote the epistles that to-day are moving 
the world. There is the power that is in God's eternal Gos- 
pel. This is the power of the key of the great King, unlock- 
ing heads, unlocking hearts, and unlocking heaven. Amen. 

PRAYER. 

We ask Thy divine blessing, our Heavenly Father, upon these immortal 
souls so precious in Thy sight. O God, these brains which Thou hast given 
us, are such as will make us responsible before the judgment bar of God, 
and we pray Thee to unlock our heads with the key of Thy resurrection. 
We ask Thee that Thou wilt turn that key in our hearts, and open them 
up and show us the emptiness without Jesus in them. We pray Thee that 
Thou wilt fill these hearts full of faith, and thereby with full joy, received 
alone by prayer. We ask Thee, O Father in Heaven, that Thou wilt also 
give us to understand that there is a wonderfully intimate connection be- 
tween heaven and earth ; that there is a way from earth to heaven, and 
that that way is open in the name of Jesus, and only in that name, to come 
home to the Father. We pray Thee now that Thou wilt give us that love 
to our fellowmen that shall lead them home to Thee. We would ask Thee 
especially, Heavenly Father, to be in those homes where there are sore 
afflictions. Thou knowest how many are this morning moaning and groan- 
ing upon sick beds ; Thou knowest of fathers and mothers that are nearly 
worn out, giving their lives caring for their dear ones ; Thou knowest the 
hospitals where moanings and groanings are heard in all rooms, and where 
the knife is cutting, and where many things are taking place that would not 
be so pleasant if we were there, but, Heavenly Father, Thou art there, ac- 
cording to Thy promise, Where two or three are gathered together in My 
name, I will be in the midst of them, and, again, Lo, I am with you alway, 
even unto the end of the world. Do Thou go all over this land, and all over 
the sea, and be with all nations that are at war with each other, and bring 
them to peace. God help us to realize that there is only one right way to live ; 
help us to realize that there is only one right way to die; and help us to 



FIFTH SUNDAY AFTER EASTER. 425 

realize more and more that there is only one right place for man to spend 
eternity. We ask this all in the name of Jesns Christ, who taught us to pray: 
Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy Name. Thy kingdom 
come. Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our 
daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass 
against us. Lead us not into temptation. But deliver us from evil ; for Thine 
is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever and ever, Amen. 



ASCENSION DAY. 



THE CELESTIAL COUNSELLOR. 



Mark 16: 14-20. 



H 



i< \ y FTERWARDS He appeared unto the eleven as they sat at meat,, 
and upbraided them with their unbelief and hardness of heart, be- 
cause they believed not them which had seen Him after He was 
risen. And He said unto them, Go ye into all the world, and preach the 
Gospel to every creature. He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; 
but he that believeth not shall be damned. And these signs shall follow 
them that believe : In My name shall they cast out devils ; they shall 
speak with new tongues ; they shall take up serpents ; and if they drink 
any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them ; they shall lay hands on the 
sick, and they shall recover. So then after the Lord had spoken unto them, 
He was received up into heaven, and sat on the right hand of God. And 
they went forth, and preached everywhere, the Lord working with them,, 
and confirming the Word with signs following. Amen. 

Sanctify us, O Lord, through Thy Truth; 
Thv Word is truth. Amen. 



Dearly Beloved in Christ : — 

Let me take you with me into the same sick room three 
times. Let us first enter, and behold that little boy lying 
there in poor health; a physician is desired. Let us walk 
out and come back again. He is growing worse and worse, 
and we all wish we had the old home physician; we send 
for him. We go out and come in again. The pulse is beat- 
ing higher and higher, the heart with its action shows that 
something must be done soon. One after the other is called 
in for counsel. We step out silently into a room to hear 
the verdict; shall he live or shall he die? In these sick 
rooms we have but a picture of the world. Once the world 
tried to get along, and wanted a physician. The flood 
came. The world grew worse, and another physician was 

426 



ASCENSION DAY. 427 

called from home, and at last God gave the command that 
there should One come who shall be called "Wonderful, 
Counsellor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the 
Prince of Peace." The Great Counsellor came; the Great 
Physician stayed here on earth thirty-three years, and at 
last gathered His physicians close by the place where He 
sweat drops of blood, and gave them His last advice, and 
all at once He is lifted upward, upward, homeward, to the 
throne of the Father. I invite your attention this morn- 
ing to 

THE CELESTIAL COUNSELLOR. 

I. He found a very sick icorld. 
II. He prepared the only healing remedy. 
III. He made no mistake in giving His final directions. 

I. He found a very sick world. All were sick, and all 
had the same disease. 

1. All were sick, the physicians, the people and even 
every preacher. "Afterwards He appeared unto the eleven 
as they sat at meat and upbraided them with their unbelief 
and hardness of heart, because they believed not them 
which had seen Him after He was risen." 

These eleven men were upbraided, why? Because they 
themselves were sick. What an unfit set of men they were 
at this hour, to go out into the world and proclaim the Gos- 
pel of peace, when they themselves had just proved to be 
infidels. Angels came and told them that Jesus had risen; 
the women told them that Jesus had risen; young men 
who ate supper with Him came that night and told them. 
They had the message, and yet some of them would not be- 
lieve. Oh, how sick the physicians were! 

And if the physicians themselves, who had been sitting 
down at the feet of the great Teacher for three long years, 
were sick men, what must have been the condition of the 
world; what must have been the condition of the people; 
and what must have been the condition of the little chil- 
dren, for that which is born of flesh is flesh? How can you 
expect a healthy child born of diseased parents? How can 
you expect a perfect child born of sickly parents? 



4:28 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

Not only was it true that all the children were sick, but 
all Nature was sick. The command was given to preach 
the Gospel to every creature. There is not a thing in the 
world that does not need the power of the Gospel. 

2. Not only is it true that all are sick, but it is true 
that they all have the same disease. Something wrong in 
the head; something wrong in the heart; and something 
wrong in sinful growth. 

Something wrong in the head. If we cannot believe 
the testimony of such good men as those that say that 
Jesus has risen from the dead; if we cannot believe the 
testimony of the holy angels ; if we cannot believe the testi- 
mony of the men who had seen the Lord Jesus Christ eat 
after He had risen from the dead, then pray tell me what 
kind of testimony can we believe? There are many people 
in these days who seem to think it wise not to believe any- 
thing unless they can see it, as if it were possible, in the 
first place, to believe anything we see. I do not need any 
faith to discern that this is a Bible. I see it with my eyes. 
"Faith is the substance of things hoped for, and the evi- 
dence of things not seen." But the truth of it is, that if 
the head is not sick we believe nearly everything that we 
now know, by testimony. I never saw Egypt, yet I know 
there is an Egypt; I never saw Japan; yet I know there is 
a war over there; I never saw Napoleon, yet I am just as 
certain that there was a Napoleon as I am that you are 
sitting before me. So I declare, on the authority of good 
sense, not to say anything about Revelation, that God 
found the head sick when He declared unto them that they 
had not believed His message, and He therefore upbraided 
them. 

Not only were their heads sick, but their hearts were 
sick. "Afterwards He appeared unto the eleven as they 
sat at meat, and upbraided them with their unbelief and 
hardness of heart." Oh! how many people there are in the 
world to-day who have that disease; but there is one kind 
of heart disease that the whole world has got, and that is 
hardness of heart. We are not willing to receive the Holy 
Spirit and His message as we ought to receive it; we are 
all by nature stubborn; we are all hardening our own 



ASCENSION DAY. 42<J 

hearts to a certain degree, as the Pharisees did, and that 
is the disease that Jesus, the great Celestial Counsellor, 
found in the world, and it was for that reason that he up- 
braided them. It would certainly seem very cruel for a 
physician to stand by the bedside of a sick man and scold 
him for being sick, if the poor man could not help it, but 
when there are men who will not take care of themselves 
when they are well, when they persist in doing the very 
things that bring them down to their beds time and again, 
then the physician has the right to stand by the bedside of 
the sick man and scold. It is a remarkable fact that on 
the very last day that the Lord Jesus Christ was here on 
earth visibly, He showed the disciples that He did not have 
that silly love that some parents have, who seem to think 
it would be cruel to upbraid a child, and therefore let the 
child have its own way. The Germans call that kind of 
love "monkey love." There is no real, genuine love in a 
parent who will let children have their own way. The 
Lord Jesus Christ here sets us an example. Why did He 
upbraid the disciples? Because He dearly loved them, 
and because they were going in a wrong direction. They, 
to be leaders of men, must themselves be led by the power 
of God, and since they had been told for three long years 
that He was going to die, and rise again and go to the 
Father and had not believed it, it became His final duty to 
scold them on the last day that He was with them on earth, 
that they might remember thereafter that it is an earnest 
matter to be on the path of right and to be warned against 
wrong, and I would advise you always to be on the side of 
right, and, if it becomes necessary, upbraid your best friend 
on earth in order to keep him on the side of God and on 
the side of right. 

So you see they all had the same disease — the disease 
of the head, the disease of the heart, and a sinful groivth. 
I call this very sin a sinful growth, because He would not 
have scolded them for something they could not help, but 
the truth of it is, they were more infidelic than it was 
necessary for them to be. It is true, we are all born in sin 
and we cannot help it; it is true, that no man on earth can 
keep the law of God perfectly; we are too imperfect to keep 



430 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

that holy law perfectly; but, on the other hand, there is no 
reason why children of God should go on and wilfully break 
the Ten Commandments; there is no reason why we should 
go on and sin against the better knowledge and the better 
light, as so many people do, for that is that sinful growth 
that I am speaking of this morning, that the Lord God 
found in the hearts of all people. 

II. But the Celestial Counsellor prepared the only 
healing remedy. Notice its cost, and its ingredients. 

1. What was the cost of this remedy that the great 
Counsellor now left back for the world? In one word it 
is called Gospel. "And He said unto them, Go ye into all 
the world and preach the Gospel to every creature." That 
was the remedy that He left, and did you ever stop to think 
what it cost? This remedy was not one which was wrought 
out in a day. We might say that this remedy was thought 
of before the hills and the valleys and the oceans were in 
His mind. We are told in God's Holy Word that before 
the foundation of the world was laid we were called in 
Christ. You must not think that man was an afterthought, 
after the worlds were here. You may have seen the artist 
paint a picture. Do you not know that that picture was in 
his mind before he got the canvas; do you not know that 
the picture was in his mind before he dipped the brush into 
the paint; do you not know that the picture was the first 
thing in his mind, then came the canvas, then the paint 
and the brush, then the artistic work, and the thing fin- 
ished last was the first thing in the artist's mind? And 
just so it is with regard to the great work of this great 
Counsellor. In a certain sense, He thought of man and his 
redemption long before the hills were, long before those 
stars were shining in their brightness, before the founda- 
tion of the world was laid we were called in Christ, but 
even after He became incarnate, even after He came here 
on earth, He was working for thirty-three long years, or 
one-third of a century, at this great remedy. And, oh! how 
He worked the last three years! And, oh! how He worked 
the last three days, and the last three hours! When He 
cried out at last, draining the very dregs of hell, "My God! 
My God! Why hast Thou forsaken Me?" I tell you, my 



ASCENSION DAY. 431 

friends, it cost work to bring about this great remedy for 
this poor, sick world. 

And it not only cost work, it cost the Counsellor's very 
life. That Counsellor who was Wonderful, was the One 
that was hanging on Calvary's hill; it was there that He 
not only was hanging for three long hours in the sunlight, 
that the world might see that this is the Counsellor, but 
three long hours in the darkness, that all Nature might 
mourn, and that all the world might realize that now He is 
pouring out His life-blood for the remedy for this poor, sick 
world, and at last, when He said, "It is finished/' the rem- 
edy was finished; when He said, "Father, into Thy hands I 
commend My spirit," He thereby finished the great remedy 
for the poor, sick world. 

He not only gave His life, but in a certain sense we 
might say that the remedy cost millions of lives of others. 
Not that any man on earth accomplished anything by his 
own power for our redemption, nevertheless, it would be 
ignoring a great truth, if we did not see that the Gospel 
of Christ has cost the lives of men. Why were those one 
hundred and eighty-five millions of men in the first three 
centuries of the Christian era burned, and torn asunder by 
animals, and trees bent down to pull their limbs apart; why 
were they dipped in burning tar? All because this great 
remedy has cost Christ's life, and we, to be His disciples, 
must follow in His footsteps, and take up our cross. It 
cost the lives of men; yes, this is a dear remedy for this 
sick world. 

2. And what are the ingredients of this great remedy? 
You will find them all mentioned in the last chapter of 
Kevelations, the 16th verse, where Jesus Christ speaks from 
heaven once more, long after He had ascended, and said: "I 
am the root and the offspring of David, and the bright and 
morning star." In those three words you will find the 
great remedy, with all the ingredients. The root of David! 
How could Jesus Christ be the root of David? How could 
He be the offspring of David? How could He be the bright 
and morning star? 

It is very well understood, my friends, that the root of 
the tree must give power to the tree and to the fruit. The 



432 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

Lord Jesus Christ declares that He is the root of David. In 
other words, it is a beautiful way of telling us that He is 
the Son of God; and when He tells us that He is the off- 
spring of David, it is a beautiful way of telling us that He 
was the Son of man ; and when He says that He is the brigbt 
and morning star, it is a beautiful way of telling us that 
He is the light of the world. So we find that the ingre- 
dients of this great remedy are the Son of God, the Son of 
Man, and the Light of the World. 

Yes, the Son of God had to be the pay for this great 
remedy. When you stop to think that one soul alone is 
worth more than all the world — Jesus says, "What will 
it profit a man if he shall gain the whole world and lose his 
own soul?" — if you stop to think further, that every man is 
by nature lost; if you stop to think further, that to save one 
man alone would require a gift as valuable as the whole 
world, you will begin to realize how many worlds it would 
take to save even as many souls as are sitting before me. 
Add to this congregation all the people in the world, 
and then add all the living people in the world to 
those who have lived, and to those who shall yet live, and 
you will begin to see what a wonderful price it would take 
to redeem the whole lost world. There is no angel in 
heaven who can pay the debt; no power on earth could pay 
the debt; none could pay the debt but the only heir of the 
only true and living God — the root of David — and that root 
of David had to go into this remedy. 

But even God Himself could not fulfill this Word with- 
out being man. God had said, "The soul that sinneth, it 
shall die," and God Himself could not lie. Now, if God 
could not lie, and if the soul that sins must die, how could 
God remain true and save the lost world? There is only 
one way to do it, and that is by paying a price that is suffici- 
ent to cover the debt, to die ; but only God, when He becomes 
man, can die for the sins of the world and pay the debt; 
consequently we find that this same root of David becomes a 
little babe in Bethlehem — the offspring of David ; and this 
little child in Bethlehem's crib must give His life for the 
sins of the world, in order that we may have this remedy 
completed. 



ASCENSION DAY. 433 

No wonder the star came from the East. In that little 
crib lies the .Morning Star! "The bright and morning star/' 
Just before sun up, and when the other stars have gone 
down, there is the star of the morning, but even at the ris- 
ing of the sun the morning star will disappear, but not so 
with this Morning Star. We are told in the Book of Reve- 
lations that up there, there shall be no sun any more, no 
moon any more, no stars any more, but there shall be the 
bright Morning Star — Jesus Christ, the Light of the World! 
And that Light of the World is the remedy which is the 
root of David, and the offspring of David. 

It might be well, just for a few moments, to follow this 
remedy as it is being prepared. Away down in the garden 
of Eden a seed was planted. The seed was described in 
these words: "I will put enmity between thee and the 
woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise 
thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.' 7 That seed grew, 
and in time it w T as told to Abraham that in his seed all the 
nations of the earth should be blessed. Time passed on, 
and Jacob looked at that plant, and he said, "I know that 
my Redeemer liveth." Isaiah watched that wonderful root 
of David as it grew, and he said it is "Wonderful, it is the 
Counsellor, it is the Mighty God, it is the everlasting 
Father, it is the Prince of Peace." This root was growing 
until it covered the Holy Land, and for four hundred years 
Israel was watching its growth, between Malachi and Mat- 
thew. At last it was observed by the star of the east that this 
plant had reached Jerusalem; it was noticed that it was 
creeping over the crib at Bethlehem; it was noticed, fur- 
thermore, that it had been growing and growing and grow- 
ing, until at last it began to climb around the trees in Geth- 
semane, and it was noticed that in this root and on 
this plant were drops of blood. This same vine is pulled 
down, and taken to the city of Jerusalem. Soldiers were 
there, and stripped it ; there were others there who buffeted 
it; there were others there who bruised it, and at last they 
dragged it down, over the brook of Kidron; they dragged 
it back and put it upon a tree; they nailed it fast; it 
climbed over and grew on to another tree, and a drop of 
this remedy fell upon the dving thief, and he was saved. 
28 



434 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

They took this same plant clown, and tried to bury it. It 
grew in the grave, and grew oh until it went to the very 
gates of hell, and began to say — "Speak, hell, speak; 
where is thy victory? Behold, Satan, behold, thy kingdom 
crushed! 7 ' It grew until it burst the bars of death, the 
stone rolled back, and it began to grow larger and larger, 
until one day it started from the hill, and where the first 
drops of blood were seen on it it started upward. They 
saw it grow past the stars and whirling world systems, un- 
til it went up into the very gates of heaven and climbed 
around the throne, and there they saw the fruits of the root 
of David and the offspring of David. Such, my friends, is 
the Gospel of Jesus Christ. 

III. This great Celestial Counsellor made no mistake 
in giving His final directions concerning the remedy; He 
made no mistake in giving directions to the physicians; He 
made no mistake in giving directions to the peoplec 

1. As to the physicians, they must remember three 
things: That all people have the same disease; that they 
all need the same remedy; and that it is cruel to neglect a 
single creature. 

What is the disease? Look again over this sick world — 
hardening of the heart, a brain that is not right with God, 
a sinful growth. This same disease is found in every na- 
tion, in every family on God's earth, and what is the rem- 
edy? Some diseases we hear of have thousands of rem- 
edies to cure, and yet are not cured; but here is a disease 
that the great Counsellor says can be healed, and the only 
remedy, says He, to His physicians, is the Gospel. What 
is the Gospel? "The Gospel is the glad tidings that Jesus 
Christ has come into the world to save sinners, and through 
faith to make them forever blessed." This is the remedy, 
says the Lord Jesus Christ, the great Counsellor. 

And He says, furthermore, to the physicians, Do not 
neglect a single creature. "Go ye into all the world and 
preach the Gospel to every creature." He did not say, 
Preach only to white people; He did not say, Go and preach 
only to the old people; He did not say, Go and preach only 
to man, but to every creature. Yes, my dear friends, there 
are creatures that need the Gospel aside from man. We 



ASCENSION DAY. 435 

are told in the epistle of Paul to the Romans that all na- 
ture is groaning and suffering for the Gospel of Christ. 
Do you think for a single moment that all those stars in 
heaven can be in harmony with this sin-cursed world, 
and not feel the groaning? Do you not see on your 
own streets how the horses are being burdened by ungodly 
men? Do you not hear the groanings and the moanings of 
the irrational animals all over the world, that are being 
tortured by sinful man? The whole earth is sick, and all 
the animal world is moaning and groaning and crying out 
for the effects of this great remedy of the great Celestial 
Counsellor, who ascended to heaven. 

Do not neglect a single creature. When I stop to think 
that every child is born in sin, that God Himself says, 
"That which is born of flesh is flesh," and, "Except man be 
born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God;" when I stop 
to think that He gave the command on the last day that 
He was on earth, to go into all the world and preach the 
Gospel to every creature, and "He that believeth and is 
baptized shall be saved, and he that believeth not shall be 
damned," and then stop to think how many ministers of 
the Gospel there are who pay no attention to the little 
children, who pay no attention to the poor little sick in- 
fants, and let them die in their sins, I say, God have 
mercy upon these poor physicians! If a doctor were to 
come into my home when we are all sick, and simply feel 
the pulse of father and of mother and of the oldest chil- 
dren, and let the poor little infant lie there ; and if he were 
to prepare his medicine only for the older ones that are 
sick, and nothing for the poor little infant, and then go 
out, I would say to that physician, "Never enter our door 
again." And yet there are ministers of the Gospel in these 
days that are letting the poor little children grow up in 
their sins without holy baptism, letting them die in their 
sickness, and God bought the remedy with His blood, and 
they do not want to apply it to the little children. Oh, 
says God to the physicians, My directions are too plain, 
you cannot misunderstand them. And I say not only to 
the children, but to every creature, there is not an animal 
on earth that does not need the effects of the Gospel, not 



436 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

to say anything about these dear little children, who are 
as precious in God's sight as men and women are; what 
right under heaven can there be for neglecting the poor 
sick children in this world? Oh, physicians, waken up 
and listen to the great Celestial Counsellor's advice! 

2. It is not only plain to the physicians, but it is very 
plain to the patients. "He that believeth and is baptized 
shall be saved." Could God make anything plainer than 
that? You know when you get a medicine there are usu- 
ally directions for adults and for children. It seems to me 
it is not very hard for the older patients to understand 
what they are to do to be saved. He that hears this Gos- 
pel, if he believes and is baptized, shall be saved. What 
does it mean to believe? It means to know Christ; it 
means to give your assent to Him when you hear of Him; it 
means to put your confidence in Him. It is one thing to 
know that there is a Christ, but that is no saving faith. 
The devil knows that. It is another thing to know that 
Jesus Christ can save, but that doesn't help any one. The 
devil knows that. It is still another thing to know that 
Jesus Christ can save, and that He will save, and that you 
trust Him and be saved, and be baptized in the name of the 
Father, Son and Holy Ghost, and be faithful unto death, 
and you shall receive the crown of eternal life. This is 
plain, and no one can misunderstand it. Notice well that 
this great Counsellor does not leave one direction for 
adults, and another for children; He left one direction 
for the whole family: "He that believeth and is baptized 
shall be saved." It is not hard to understand that a father 
must believe and be baptized if he is to be saved; it is not 
hard to understand that a mother must believe and be bap- 
tized if she is to be saved; it is not hard to understand that 
the older children must believe and be baptized if they are 
to be saved; it isn't hard to understand that God wants the 
little child saved, for He said, "Of such is the kingdom of 
heaven," and if they can enter the kingdom of heaven, do 
you mean to tell me they are not fit for holy baptism? 
When the Lord Jesus Christ says of these older people, 
Except ye be converted and become like little children, ye 
shall in no wise enter the kingdom of heaven, the great 



ASCENSION DAY. 437 

truth of it is, the great Counsellor says, that there is no 
baptism except infant baptism. Older people are not fit to 
be baptized until they accept Jesus Christ like a little child. 
Little children are fit for heaven because God wants them 
brought there, and they are fit for baptism because He 
wants them in heaven, and older people cannot become fit 
for heaven until they become like little children, so all 
baptism is infant baptism. Isn't it plain? The great 
Counsellor has made this thing very clear. Well, you say, 
the poor little children cannot believe. Let us see if they 
can not. 

"But he that believeth not shall be damned." Are you 
ready to say that the little child cannot believe, and there- 
fore it is going to be damned? Listen to the great Coun- 
sellor. He took a little child up in His arms and then 
blessed it, and said: "He that offendeth one of these little 
ones, which believe in Me, it were better for him that a 
millstone were hanged about his neck, and he were 
drowned in the depths of the sea." If I understand that 
verse plainly, it means this: You old, sick people in the 
world, I have got a remedy for you and it will cure you, but 
if you are not willing that the same remedy shall be given 
to the little children, the best thing you can do is to go and 
buy a rope and tie one end of it around your neck and the 
other to a big stone, and walk out some place where the 
water is deep enough, so you can throw the stone in and 
pull you down to the bottom and keep you there. Isn't it 
plain? "He that offendeth one of these little ones which 
believe in Me, it were better for him that a millstone were 
hanged about his neck, and he were drowned in the depths 
of the sea." Shame on Lutherans who will not even appre- 
ciate their own Church; they do not know the great treas- 
ures they have; the pure Gospel which the Celestial Coun- 
sellor left here the last day, when He ascended to heaven. 
The Gospel is plain, the directions are plain. He that be- 
lieveth not shall be damned, whether baptized or not bap- 
tized; and he that believeth, and is baptized, shall be saved. 

And there is still another truth which the great Celes- 
tial Counsellor left back, and that is, that the baptized be- 
liever is a power in this world. 



438 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

"And these signs shall follow them that believe: In My 
name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new 
tongues; they shall take up serpents; and if they drink any 
deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands 
on the sick, and they shall. recover." Isn't that a wonder- 
ful power? How often the ungodly world has said, Why 
do you not test your Christianity? My friends, it has been 
tested. I would have you to understand that not a single 
promise the great Celestial Counsellor made that day has 
remained unfulfilled. "These signs shall follow them that 
believe: In My name shall they cast out devils." Did not 
Peter and Paul cast out devils? Kead the Acts of the 
Apostles. "They shall speak with new tongues." Did they 
not speak with new tongues down in the house of Corne- 
lius? Did they not speak with new tongues fifty days after 
the resurrection, and ten days after the great ascension 
day? Did they not speak with new tongues on that great 
Pentecostal day? "They shall take up serpents." Did not 
Paul, at the island of Miletus, take the deadly serpent from 
his arm and cast it into the fire? Did the people not ex- 
pect him to fall over dead, and yet it never hurt him? 
"And if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt 
them." Did they not try to poison the only apostle that 
died a natural death? Did they not mix up the poison for 
the beloved John, did he not drink it and did he not walk 
about, and it never hurt him? "They shall lay hands on 
the sick, and they shall recover." Did not Peter and all 
the apostles heal the sick and raise them up? Oh, my 
friends, I would have you know that a baptized believer in 
the Lord Jesus Christ is a wonderful power. Well, some 
one may say, Why do you not all do these things? Let me 
ask you a few questions: W 7 hy didn't Jesus Christ perform 
miracles every hour? Why did He not perform them every 
day? Let me go a step further. Do you suppose, my 
friends, that you would have a stronger faith to-day if you 
would still depend upon these wonderful things than if you 
did not? Why did the Lord Jesus Christ say to the people, 
Do not go and tell these things that I have just done? Be- 
cause people are to believe His Word without looking at 
the miracle. 



ASCENSION DAY. 439 

But, 011 the other hand, we do not find that God has 
ever withdrawn His power from the Church. If it is neces- 
sary to-day that 1 shall live, I can drink poison and it will 
not hurt me. Is it not a fact that thousands and millions 
of people to-day are speaking with new tongues? The 
brethren of the ministry will understand what I say when 
I tell them that there are a great man} 7 catechumens that 
will talk, and talk, and talk, and when you ask them to get 
up and make a prayer they never move their tongues. No 
man on earth ever prayed without a new tongue, and just 
as sure as you are praying at all you are praying with new 
tongues. I would have you to understand that devils are 
being driven out of Christians to-day. Many are asking 
the question, Does the devil still possess men? Why, in 
the name of common sense, if God does not possess you, 
who does? "He that is not for Me is against Me, and he 
that does not gather with Me scattereth." "Ye are not 
your own," says God. If you are not your own, and you 
are not God's, whose are you? Well, you say, Satan does 
not live in me, or in mine, as he did in the young Gadarene. 
I would have you to understand that Satan may go out of 
a man and come back into him again. You may own ten 
houses in Mansfield, and live in only one of them; the nine 
are just as much yours as the one in which you live; and if 
you are not a child of God, you are just as much Satan's as 
if he were reigning in you. Every Christian on earth is to- 
night a monument, a miracle of God's grace, of driving out 
the devil. The old serpent is still in our midst, and he that 
does not worship the Christ worships the serpent, and he 
that worships the Christ is delivered from the serpent. 
And thus, my dear friends, God is doing these wonderful 
works to-day. We sometimes act as if we thought God is 
not raising the sick any more, through the instrumentality 
of servants. I can take you down here on East Second 
Street, to a woman who, not more than four months ago, 
was declared by a number of physicians unable to live an- 
other day. To-day she is doing her own work. God helped 
her. Oh, my friends, there are homes all over this country 
to-day that can testify that God has heard the prayers of 
His servants. It is not an accident that we go to the homes 



440 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

of the sick as ministers of the Gospel. There is a feeling 
in the hearts of men that the prayer of a godly man avail- 
eth much. It may be that you who are sitting here to- 
day may have had funerals in your own homes, had it not 
been for the prayers of God's people. The baptized be- 
liever is a power, says the great Counsellor. 

"So, then, after the Lord had spoken unto them, He was 
received up into heaven, and sat upon the right hand of 
God. And they went forth, and preached everywhere, the 
Lord working with them, and confirming the Word with 
signs following." 

"So, then, after the Lord had spoken unto them ; He was 
received up into heaven." What a view that must have 
been! In sight of Gethsemane, from the same hill on which 
He had prayed so often, all at once He is lifted up,, and 
w T ith hands of blessing, He starts higher and higher, and 
the eyes of His disciples following Him they see Him as He 
goes up into the clouds; they watch Him until He looks 
smaller and smaller in the distance; they keep their eyes 
fastened on Him until they see nothing but a little speck, 
and at last He has gone home to heaven — sweet 'home — and 
the angel of God assures them that they shall see Him 
come back as they saw Him go. 

And oh, w T hat rejoicing there must have been in heaven! 
"Lift up your heads, O ye gates, and be ye lifted up ye ever- 
lasting doors, for the King of Glory shall come in!" What 
a home going that was for the Son of God! What a home 
coming that was for the angels, and the saints! What a 
greeting that must have been for the Father and His Son, 
Jesus Christ, at the throne of God! Yes, Jesus went home. 

The Counsellor is here 

See His hands as they spread 
O'er His disciples so dear — 

Over living and dead. 

As His hands upward move 

Blessings drop on this earth. 
See those angels of love ! 

They are here at His birth. 

See those wounds in His feet 
As they move to the skies. 



ASCENSION DAY. 441 

They are nearing the street — 
Golden street — where none dies. 

There He stands, as He said, 

Pleading now for your soul. 
What, if now you were dead? — 

He shall soon call the roll. — Amen. 

PRAYER. 

O God, our Heavenly Father, we thank Thee for the blessing of speak- 
ing in Thy name to these, Thy people, whom Thou, as the Great Coun- 
sellor, hast found sick in head and heart and sinful growth. O God, we 
thank Thee, that Thou hast not only found their sickness, but hast given 
unto them such a precious remedy — Thine own Gospel — purchased with 
Thy blood. And we thank Thee that Thou hast not ascended to heaven 
to take Thy Gospel with Thee, but to leave it here with the promise of the 
Holy Spirit, with the promise of its spreading all over the world, that all 
might hear the glorious news of the Savior of the world. We ask Thee 
this day to make this Ascension message, the message of Thy Church 
to every man that walks upon the face of this globe. We pray Thee that 
we may more and more appreciate the influence of Thy great Gospel. We 
pray Thee to kindle anew in our hearts a flame of fire and love, and keep us 
humble, and make us a power on account of the humility, and faith in Him. 
We pray Thee to bless Thy servants all over the world and use them to 
Thy glory, and to spread Thy Gospel quickly to the ends of the earth, 
that we may see Thee come, as Thou didst ascend. We ask it all in the 
name of Jesus, our Savior, who taught us to pray : 

Our Father, who art in heaven : hallowed be Thy name ; Thy kingdom 
come ; Thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven. Give us, this day, our 
daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass 
against us. Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For Thine 
is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever and ever. Amen. 



SIXTH SUNDAY AFTER EASTER. 



THE COMFORTER IS COMING. 



B 



John 15 : 26 to 16 : 4. 

ll^f^ UT when the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you from 
the Father, even the Spirit of Truth, which proceedeth from the 
Father, He shall testify of Me. And ye also shall bear witness, 
because ye have been with Me from the beginning. These things have I 
spoken unto you, that ye should not be offended. They shall put you out 
of the synagogues; yea, the time cometh that whosoever killeth you will 
think that he doeth God service. And these things will they do unto you, 
because they have not known the Father, nor Me. B'ut these things have 
I told you, that when the time shall come, ye may remember that I told 
you of them. And these things I said not unto you at the beginning, ber 
cause I was with you." 

Sanctify us, O Lord, through Thy Truth; 
Thy Word is truth. Amen. 



Beloved in Christ : — 

When Simeon of old went into the temple, awaiting 
the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ, it is said that he w T as 
looking for the consolation of Israel. That very word, 
consolation, shows us that Jesus Christ Himself was a 
consoler, or a comforter, and so He was. Oh! how much 
comfort He brought to Mary and Martha; how much com- 
fort He brought to His disciples from day to day when 
they were troubled; and now, when the time had come 
that He was to be crucified and leave His disciples, they 
felt that they had lost their great Comforter. Conse- 
quently He promised them another Comforter. "I will 
pray the Father and He shall give you another Comforter 
that He may abide with you forever," and this other Com- 
forter is the Holy Spirit. 

442 



SIXTH SUNDAY AFTER EASTER. 443 

This Holy Spirit came on the day of Pentecost, and is 
coming now on this day. On that first great day of Pente- 
cost lie came with power. lie was heard by liis disciples 
and in the form of fiery tongues was seen by them. His 
works were so miraculous that the w T hole city of Jerusa- 
lem was stirred from its very foundation at the wonderful 
things that were taking place — all of them hearing in 
their own language the Gospel of Christ from the humble 
Galileans. This great Comforter, who came with power 
on that first day of Pentecost, has been coming with special 
power on that same day in the history of the Christian 
Church. It has been noticed throughout the history of the 
Lutheran Church that the day of Pentecost is a wonderful 
blessing to that Church. Missionaries have noticed in the 
islands of the South Sea, as well as in Southern Africa, 
that God came with a special blessing on the day of Pente- 
cost. 

We need the Holy Spirit in our midst to-day as much 
as they did in the days of the apostles, and as they waited 
in an upper room for ten days and prayed earnestly for His 
coming, so we should earnestly pray for His coming now 
and at all times. If there ever was a time w T hen the Church 
of God needed a special blessing from on high, it seems to 
me it is now, in this last age of the world, when so many 
thousands of people in our own midst are heathen, not 
knowing that the Bible is God's Word; not knowing that 
they must be born again if they wish to see the kingdom 
of God. We need power from on high," and let us earnestly 
pray now for the coming of the Holy Spirit. 

THE COMFORTER IS COMING. 

May He bless us in this hour, and when He does come 
let us notice, 

I. He comes to testify of Jesus in us. 
II. He comes to testify of Jesus through us. 

I. "But when the Comforter is come, whom I will send 
unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth, which 
proceedeth from the Father, He shall testifv of Me." Who 



444 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

is this Holy Spirit? In the Khenish translation of the 
Bible this word is not translated at all; it is given as in 
the original, and called "Paraclete," meaning instructor, 
monitor, teacher; in another translation of the Bible He is 
called the "Advocate," and in our own King James' trans- 
lation He is called the "Comforter." All three of these 
words are very suggestive and expressive of this Great 
One who is coming to give us all a special blessing. 

1. He is called the teacher, or the Paraclete, because 
He comes from God and is the Spirit of truth. "But when 
tne Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you from 
the Father" — here we learn what we confess in the Creed, 
that the Holy Spirit has proceeded from the Father and 
from the Son; we learn, therefore, that He is actually 
God. Peter said unto Ananias: "Why hath Satan filled 
thine heart to lie unto the Holy Ghost? thou hast not lied 
unto man, but thou hast lied unto God." From these w^ords 
we learn that the Holy Spirit is God, just as well as the 
Father, and just as well as the Son. In the formula of 
Baptism we have Him on a parallel with the Father and 
the Son, when we are told to go and baptize all nations 
in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy 
Ghost. This God is none other than the Spirit of truth, 
proceeding from God, who is Truth. What else could 
He be but the Spirit of truth? And from these words, we 
learn at once that if we wish the Holy Spirit to come into 
our midst, we must in heart be honest and upright. There 
is nothing that God, the Holy Spirit, so detests as hying 
and hypocrisy. How can the God of truth testify in a 
lying heart? How can He testify in a hypocritical church? 
How can He testify of Jesus Christ in our midst, if we are 
going to live a dual life, trying to serve God on the one 
hand and the devil on the other; working with God one 
day, and with Satan the next; having the truth in our 
hearts apparently at one time, and the next time living 
with the world? It is impossible for this great Comforter 
to testify in our hearts, if we will not have honest hearts, 
upright, like Saul of Tarsus. Some people may wonder why 
God in His mercy should stop that man Saul when going 
to Damascus, hurl him from his horse, and thereby lead 



SIXTH SIXDAY AFTER EASTER. 445 

liim into the apostleship, and make him the great apostle 
to the Gentiles. It is not hard to understand, if we re- 
member that this Comforter is the Spirit of Truth, and if 
we remember on the other hand, that Saul was also an 
honest man. He was just as sincere and honest on his 
way to Damascus to persecute the Church of God, as he 
ever was afterward in defending that Church, and just 
because he was an honest man, the Spirit of truth said, 
"That man must be My man; that man must be My mes- 
senger," and it was necessary even for the Word of God 
to cry from heaven, "Saul, Saul, w r hy persecutest thou 
Me?' 7 The Spirit of truth was to testify in his heart and 
tell him to arise, and be baptized, and wash away his sins, 
and go forth, and proclaim, with the same honesty, the 
great message of Jesus Christ, testifying by the Comforter 
in his heart. Then, first of all, if we want the Holy Spirit 
to give us a real Pentecost next Sunday morning, we have 
to make up our minds to be honest and uprignt in our 
lives, that w^e are not going to w r alk w T ith God's people 
one day, and with the children of the devil the next, and 
that we are not going to try to carry water, as they say, 
on both shoulders. Let us be either for God or against 
Him. Let us come out on the side of God, and walk, and 
be with Him, as Enoch of old, or let us go to our place 
after death — not God's place. Sincerity, and honesty, and 
uprightness, is the condition that must exist in man before 
the Holy Spirit will testify of Jesus Christ in his heart. 

2. He is not only the Paraclete, or teacher, but is also 
called our Advocate. You understand the meaning of the 
word advocate — in other words, a lawyer. This Com- 
forter when He comes makes a plea in our hearts to con- 
vince us of something that we ourselves could never learn 
and no man on earth could convince us of, and that is that 
we are sinners, and are guilty of great sin and deserve 
eternal damnation. It is not natural for man to think 
that. The natural man thinks he is good, and that he can 
by his own righteousness enter heaven. The great Com- 
forter when He comes, enters our hearts, and makes a plea 
in our hearts, getting us ready for Jesus Christ, for whom 
He is going to testify, and says to the man, "You sinner, 



446 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

you have forgotten the first table of the law; you have 
forgotten the second table of law; you have not made the 
true and living God your only God; you have often used 
the name of God in vain; you were to keep the Sabbath 
Day holy, but instead of that you have transgressed that 
holy law; you were to honor and love y our parents in old 
age, and how often you have even said words that were 
cruel to your own mother, and to your own father." This 
Comforter stands before us as an advocate in our own 
hearts, and says, "You have had malice in your heart, and 
malice is murder; you have not been satisfied with your 
own possessions, but you have tried to reach out for things 
that were not yours; you have stolen; you have not al- 
ways told the truth, and therefore you have lied. This 
great Advocate says, you have not only lied, but you have 
coveted things that were not your own; you have coveted 
things immovable, and you have coveted things that are 
movable, and this great Advocate tells us that the Holy 
Spirit cannot bear sin. He loves the sinner but hates the 
sin, and this Advocate pleads in our hearts until we be- 
come thoroughly convinced that we are of all sinners the 
worst. 

And then, when we have come to that point, He leads 
us further, and says, Not only is it true that you are a sin- 
ner, but it is true that you are now condemned, and you 
have been, and do not know it. I would have you to under- 
stand that you are standing to-day under the curse of God; 
that the wrath of God is upon you ; that if you were to die 
this morning in your sins, you would be lost forever. No 
man on earth can convince us of that. A man who is no 
Christian does not believe what I am telling you now, but 
when a man is once convinced by the Advocate, by the 
Holy Spirit, of his sin, and of his damnation, then, my 
friends, he has something in his own heart, getting ready 
for the testimony of Jesus Christ. None but the Holy 
Spirit can give us this convincing power. 

3. And then, as an Advocate, He passes over into the 
Comforter. "But when the Comforter is come, whom I will 
send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth, 
which proceedeth from the Father, He shall testify of Me." 



SIXTH SUNDAY AFTER EASTER. 447 

When the Comforter leads us, He takes us at once over to 
Calvary. You will remember what the Bible says about 
the law. It is "the schoolmaster that brings us to Christ." 
The reason some people never come to Christ is because 
they have not let the Advocate plead in their hearts the 
holy law; but when He has held up that law to us until 
we find ourselves sinners, and condemned sinners, then 
we are driven to find help, and there is no help on earth, no ' 
help in heaven, or anywhere else, except in the Son of God. 
— Then begins this Comforter to plead of Jesus Christ. 
He says, Look there on yonder cross! Do you see Him 
hanging there? It is the innocent Lamb of God. Do you 
know He is dying for your sins? Do you know He is inno- 
cent? Do you know that you ought to be on that cross, 
and He ought to stand where you are, — free? Do you see 
that blood dripping down from His hands and His feet? 
Do you see that crown of thorns upon His head? Do you 
see those lashes across His back? Do you see the look of 
suffering upon His face? Do you see the Lamb of God 
Himself willing to bear the curse of hell and of the world, 
all for you? And thus the great Comforter keeps on hold- 
ing up to us Christ, the Lamb of God, that taketh away 
the sins of the world, until we can, as John Bunyan says, 
walk up to that great cross, and find the burdens roll off 
of our backs and go down into that grave in which death 
was conquered by the risen Lord. 

Then this same great Comforter brings us to the Word, 
and says, I show you forgiveness. Do you see these words 
where my Lord and Master says to you, "Whosesoever sins 
ye remit, they are remitted unto them; and whosesoever 
sins ye retain, they are retained?" This is comfort, do 
you see these words, where the Savior says, "He that be- 
lieveth and is baptized shall be saved, and he that be- 
lieveth not shall be damned?" Here is your Comfort. Do 
you see these words where the wonderful Lord said, "God 
so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, 
that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have 
everlasting life?" Do you believe this? Yes. And here 
is your comfort. Do you hear again how the Lord and 
Savior said, "As I live saith the Lord, I have no pleasure in 



448 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

the death of the wicked, but that the wicked should turn 
from his way and live?" Tins is your comfort. Do you not 
hear Him calling, "Come unto Me, all ye that labor and are 
heavy laden, and I will give you rest?' 7 This is your comfort. 
He leads us further and says : Take eat, this is My body, 
which is given for you; this do in remembrance of Me. And 
He took the cup, and blessed it, and said, This is My blood 
of the New Testament which is shed for many for the 
remission of sins; this do as oft as ye drink it, in remem- 
brance of Me. This is your comfort. And so He leads us 
to the office of the Keys; He leads us to our baptismal 
covenant, and to the wonderful promises of God; He leads 
us to the Holy Supper, and thus, in the means of grace 
He comforts us poor sinners, This, my friends, is the mes- 
sage of the Comforter who is coming. 

II. He not only testifies of Jesus in us, but He testi- 
fies of Jesus also through us. "And ye also shall bear 
witness because ye have been with Me from the beginning." 
These words were addressed to the apostles who had been 
with the Lord Jesus Christ for three long years. The prom- 
ise of the Holy Spirit was now given to them, when He w T as 
coming with power from on high. They were to remain at 
Jerusalem until they received this power, and then go 
out into the world and preach the Gospel to every creature, 
and this was the promise: He that believeth and is bap- 
tized shall be saved; and he that believeth not shall be 
damned. This promise was not only given to these apostles 
representing the Christian Church. The apostles have all 
long since passed into eternity. This same command is 
given to every Christian, and to the Church of God to-day. 
This same Comforter who came to them is coming to us 
through His means of grace, and comes with special power 
on the day of Pentecost, and when He does come, it is His 
purpose that we, too, shall be witnesses. What is a wit- 
ness? A. witness, primarily, is a man who knows the 
truth, or how shall he testify? And not only must he 
know the truth, but he must have the courage to tell it. 
How else shall he testify? Not only must he have the 
courage to tell the truth, but he must not bear malice in 
his heart concerning whom he testifies. These three ele- 



SIXTH SUNDAY AFTER EASTER. 440 

ments lie in a witness, in whom and through whom this 
great Comforter testifies of Jesus Christ to the world-. 

1. It is very plain how the apostles might know the truth, 
and thereby be true witnesses. They could say. We have 
touched Ilim; we have seen Him; we have handled Him; 
but how can you and I testify after nearly two thousand 
years? Have you and I seen Jesus Christ eye to eye and 
face to face? Have we walked with Him as John and the 
other apostles walked with Him? Have Ave laid our heads 
upon His breast? Have we seen Him institute the Holy 
Supper? Can you and I really become witnesses? Yes, 
my friends, we, too, can become witnesses of Jesus Christ. 
Let us not forget that this same Comforter who came to 
His disciples of old, is coming to us now, and He testifies 
in us of Jesus Christ, until Jesus Christ is as really with 
us as He was with the disciples of old. You never can be a 
witness of Jesus Christ and of the Holy Spirit, until you 
make the Bible the living word of God. You never can 
be a witness of the Holy Spirit concerning Himself in you, 
until you realize that He is personally with you. There 
is a difference between an historical Christianity and a 
genuine Christianity. Some people think of the Bible as 
a book that was written nearly two thousand years ago, 
and even more, as an old book, and that is all; some of 
them read of Jesus Christ as a character that existed on 
earth nearly two thousand years ago, and that is all, and, 
consequently, they never can be witnesses. A real, genu- 
ine witness of the Lord Jesus Christ, is one who has com- 
munion with the Holy Ghost every day; one who sees 
before him a living Word of God — as much the Word of 
God to me now, as much the Word of God to you now, as 
the very words that were audible from the mouth of Jesus 
given to His disciples nearly two thousand years ago; and 
then, when you look upon this Word as the living W 7 ord, 
as the voice of God the Holy Spirit, you will recognize, 
furthermore, that in this Word you hear these words: 
"Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world," 
"Where two or three are gathered together in My name, 
I am in the midst of them." So that Jesus Christ is with 
us now — just as much with us as He was in that upper 

^9 



450 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

room with the disciples — just as much with us now as 
He was on Calvary, and I know that He is with me, for 
His Spirit bears witness with my spirit, that I am a son of 
God, and this should be true of every one of you. 

2. In order to be a witness, we must not only know 
the truth, as it is in the Word of God, but we must have 
the courage to tell this truth. "These things have I spoken 
unto you that ye might not be offended. They shall put 
you out of the synagogues; yea, the time cometh, that 
whosoever killeth you will think that he doeth God ser- 
vice." It was no easy matter for the apostles to testify of 
Jesus Christ. The Comforter came and testified in them 
of Jesus Christ, and then began to testify through them 
of Jesus Christ. It was not long until they lost their po- 
sitions in the church — the old Pharisees rejected them; 
it was not long until they lost their social positions; it was 
not long until one after the other lost his life, until only one 
out of the twelve died a natural death. There hangs Peter on 
the cross with his head down, instead of up, like his Master's. 
Why? Because he testified of Jesus Christ. There is Paul, a 
prisoner at Rome. Why? Because he testified of Jesus Christ. 
There are His apostles, except John, dying one by one. Why? 
Because they testified of Jesus Christ. There is John, down 
on the isle of Patmos. Why? Because he testified of Jesus. 
My dear friends, it takes courage to be a witness of the Holy 
Spirit concerning Jesus Christ on earth. There is where the 
weakness of the Christian Church of to-day is. There is 
a spirit going abroad, and it is in the Church of God, that 
we must be at peace with everybody, let it cost what it 
will; we are in business, professional or otherwise, and 
we dare not say a word that will offend anyone. The con- 
sequence is that the Church of God has no witnesses any 
more. Your mouths are closed. You have not the courage 
to stand up and say what ought to be said. You are afraid 
of losing your position; you are afraid of losing trade; 
you are afraid of persecution ; you are afraid to have some- 
thing said about you or about somebody else. I appreci- 
ate the sympathy and the love that some of my own mem- 
bers have for me, but I pity the spirit that is not willing 



SIXTH SUNDAY AFTER EASTER. 451 

to have a thing said against us because we stand up for 
Jesus as we ought to; and I pity the poor churches all over 
this country that are tilled with members that are afraid 
to testify of Jesus Christ, because somebody may not like 
it; who are afraid to stand up for the truth that ought 
to be told; and I do not believe, speaking honestly, that 
there is one minister of the Gospel in Mansfield now, in- 
cluding myself, that is bold enough to say everything that 
ought to be said; and one reason we are so weak is be- 
cause our members are so w^eak. How many of us, like the 
apostles of old, would be willing to lose our homes for 
Christ's sake? How many of us would be willing to lose all 
our custom for Christ's sake? We are saying pretty things 
and saying beautiful things to children of the devil just to 
hold their custom, just to hold to their friendship, not will- 
ing that anything should suffer for the poor old Church of 
God, and it suffers all the time. My dear friends, Jesus 
Christ bled and died for this Church. When the Com- 
forter comes and testifies in man of Jesus Christ, He puts 
the same testimony in him and the same life in him that 
Jesus Himself possessed, and, consequently, if we want 
a genuine Pentecost, we have to break loose from this 
bondage of the world, from this Satanic politeness that 
will let everything suffer rather than that any one should 
be offended. The only reason under heaven why the 
Church of God is not persecuted to-day is because she does 
not take a firmer stand for right. Just as little as Satan 
loves Christ, just so little do worldly people love the Chris- 
tian Church, and just as long as professed Christians are 
willing to walk hand in hand with the world, and afraid 
of the little unpleasant things that might be said because 
we take a firm stand and walk in the path Jesus has laid 
out for us and bought for us, just so sure our testimony 
will fail, and just so sure the Church of God is suffering. 

"They shall put you out of the synagogues; yea, the 
time cometh that whosoever killeth you will think that he 
doeth God service." 

When this great Comforter does come to us and testi- 
fies in us of Jesus Christ, and gives also a testimony 
through us, He finally leads us to that point that we can 



452 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

dearly love all our enemies, and that is the grandest testi- 
mony that can be given on earth by a Christian. It is not 
hard for any child of the devil to love a friend. It does not 
even require manhood for that; any brute loves its own; 
any brute appreciates kindness; any heathen must be 
lower than the ordinary heathen if he does not appreciate 
acts of kindness; but the question is this, What are we 
Christians going to do when people mistreat us? How are 
we going to act then? There is only one way for us to 
be witnesses of Jesus Christ, and that is to treat the 
enemy exactly as Jesus does, and as Jesus did. How did 
Jesus treat His enemies? Did He fight with them down 
in the garden of Gethsemane? No, He loved them. Did 
He fight with them up before Pontius Pilate? Xo. He 
loved those enemies. When they put the cross upon His 
shoulders, did He throw it down and strike the enemies? 
Xo. He loved them. When He walked up on Calvary's 
Hill, and they stretched His hands out and drove the nails 
through them, did He pull His hand away from the nails 
and slap their faces? Xo. He loved them. When they 
stretched down His feet and drove the nails through them, 
did He kick at them? Xo. He loved them. When ,at last 
He was hanging there between heaven and earth, as if 
He was not wanted in heaven, and as if earth would not 
hear Him any longer, what did He say? Did curses fall 
from those sacred lips? Xo. "Father, forgive them, for 
they know not what they do." That was Christ's testi- 
mony concerning His enemies, and that is the testimony 
that this great Comforter puts into the hearts of men; 
and when He puts that testimony into their hearts, He goes 
on with it until He testifies through them to the world; 
and therefore He says in the text: "And these things will 
they do unto you, because they have not known the Father, 
nor Me. But these things have I told you, that when the 
time shall come you may remember that I told you of 
them; and these things I said not unto you at the begin- 
ning, because I was with you." In other words, persecu- 
tions that take place are always the result of ignorance, 
and, consequently, it becomes our duty to love ignorant 
people just as Jesus Christ did. Did you ever stop to think 






SIXTH SUNDAY AFTER EASTER. 453 

thai every enemy is an ignorant person? If anybody hates 
me, can I help it? The Lord Jesus Christ Himself was as 
much a hated man as ever dwelt on earth, but He hated 
no one. There you have the difference between Christi- 
anity and a life of the child of the devil. Any man on 
earth can love his friend; only a Christian, with Jesus 
Christ in him, can really love his enemies, and the reason 
He loves them is twofold: they do not know the Father, 
and they do not know Jesus Christ. No person on earth 
knowing Jesus Christ, and knowing the Father in heaven, 
can hate any human being. There is the test of Christianity. 
Do not think, my friends, that all preachers know Christ 
— they do not. Do not think that all professed Christians 
know Christ — they do not. The man that hates any 
man on earth does not know Jesus; that man that hates 
any man on earth does not know the Father of Christ; the 
man that has any ill will toward any human being on 
earth, has not got the love of Jesus in his heart. Why 
should I hate any man on earth? If he has a reason for 
hating me, why should I hate him? If he has no reason 
for hating me, why should I hate him? There is no reason 
for hating anybody. The man that hates me without a 
cause is to be pitied; the man that hates me when he has 
a cause, is to be loved; and so it becomes your duty and 
mine to love everybody ; and love them from the bottom 
of our hearts, and to say that this cannot be done, is to 
deny that Jesus can dwell in us. When the Comforter 
comes and dwells in us,, He testifies in us as the Paraclete, 
as the Advocate, as the Comforter, and leads us to the for- 
giveness of sin, to peace with God and with our fellow 
men; and then testifies through us because He gives us 
the truth as the Spirit of Truth, to give us the courage to 
tell it at any cost, and give us love in our hearts that will 
reach out for every man; and then, when we have that 
kind of love, we can pray as we ought to pray for the 
coming of the Holy Spirit. May He come, and may all 
our hearts be lifted up a moment in silent prayer, for the 
coming Pentecost. Silent prayer followed. 



PENTECOST. 



HOLD FAST. 



2 Tim. 1 : 13-14. 

{fWZHL OLD fast the form of sound words, which thou hast heard of me,, 
in faith and love which is in Christ Jesus. That good thing 
which was committed unto thee keep by the Holy Ghost which 

dwelleth in us." 

Sancitfy us, O Lord, through Thy Truth; 
Thy Word is Truth. Amen. 



ft 



Dear Congregation and Class : — 

This is, in many ways, a great day. It is a great day for 
the Church at large. Christmas, with its angelic songs and 
moving star; Good Friday, with heaven mourning and hell 
rejoicing; Easter, with death, Satan and hell conquered; 
Ascension, with the victorious Son of God going, and coming 
home — all these are concentrated in the coming of the Com- 
forter, the Holy Ghost. What the Lord's Day is to the week, 
Pentecost is to the Church year. God is with us every day, 
but in a special sense on the Lord's Day; the Holy Ghost 
always comes to us through the means of grace, but Pente- 
cost in Jerusalem was a great day, and to the missionaries 
on the islands, and in darkest Africa, the Holy Ghost has 
come with unusual power on that reoccurring day, and now, 
on this Pentecostal day, in all lands, thousands upon thou- 
sands will be added to God's Church by baptism, or to the 
communicant list by confirmation. This is a great day for 
this congregation. A small congregation of men, women 
and children will be added by the Lord to our number. Every 
Christian in this congregation will rejoice to-day — only 
Satan and his followers will feel sad — to see the Church of 
God prosper by the help of the Pentecostal Spirit. Let us 

454 



PENTECOST. 155 

praise God this morning and thank Him for what He has 
done for this congregation. This is a great day, too, for 
many families in this church. How many parents, and hus- 
bands and wives, would leap for joy if they could see their 
children sitting here as this class sits here this morning, 
ready to give themselves entirely to the Lord. There is 
joy not only in heaven this morning, but in many a heart 
here on earth, here in this house of God. Finally, it is also 
a great day of joy for you, O Class! How long it took some 
of you to come. You wonder yourselves this morning why 
you held back so long. Jesus died for you before you were 
born, and loved you with an everlasting love. He and the 
Father sent the Holy Spirit to call you, and He called, and 
called, and called, and all these years you have been deaf to 
His cries, but at last you recognized His voice; you saw 
your sins; you accepted Jesus Christ as your own personal 
Savior, and you are here by His great mercy to make your 
vow to be faithful to Him until death. Surely this is a great 
day for you. You will never forget it. On this day let me 

I hope you will never 



call to 


you with 


two 


words, 


whicl 


forget : 






HOLD 


FAST. 


I. 


What? 








II. 


How? 









I. Hold fast, first of all, to the Inspired Word of God. 
"Hold fast to the form of sound words which thou hast heard 
of me, in faith and love which is in Christ Jesus." 

1. The very form of God's Words you are to hold to. 
Surely you must hold then to this Book as the Bible. Re- 
member that it is said in this same epistle of Paul, "All Scrip- 
ture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for 
doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in right- 
eousness, that the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly 
furnished unto all good works." In other words, this Book 
is either all of God's Word, or none of it. God did not give 
us half a sun, or half a moon, or half an earth. When God 
intended to reveal Himself to us, He did it, and He accom- 
plished it through the prophets, and the evangelists, and the 
apostles. I hold then in my hand that to which you are to 
hold fast, — to the whole Book of God. 



456 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

And not only to the whole Word, but to every book in this 
Word. As you have correctly learned, there are sixty-six 
books in this Bible ; some were penned in the days of Moses ; 
some were penned in the days of the great prophets; some 
of them were penned in the days of Christ on earth, and 
some of them were penned even after He had ascended on 
high, but all these books have but one mind, and that one 
mind is the mind of the Holy Ghost, who came with power on 
that first great Pentecostal day, and who still comes with 
power. If it were not for the power of the Holy Spirit, why 
would we be assembled here as a large congregation in this 
morning hour? What is it that has called us here? What 
is it that has gathered us here? What is it that is enlighten- 
ing us? What is it that is keeping us? It is the Holy Ghost, 
the Author of every book in this great Book of all books, the 
King of all books. Therefore, in these days of rationalism, 
in these days of shallow infidelity, in these days of worldli- 
ness, in these days when even men of God, so called, love to 
criticize God's eternal message, let me urge upon you to hold 
fast to every book in this great Book. 

And not only to each book hold fast, but to each word. 
"Hold fast the form of sound words, which thou hast heard 
of me, in faith and love which is in Christ Jesus." In the 
former letter which he wrote to Timothy, Paul said : "If any 
man teach otherwise, and consent not to 'wholesome words, 
even the words of our Lord Jesus Christ, and to the doctrine 
which is according to godliness; he is proud, knowing 
nothing, but doting about questions and strifes of words, 
whereof cometh envy, strife, railings, evil surmisings, per- 
verse disputings of men of corrupt minds, and destitute of 
the truth, supposing that gain is godliness : from such with- 
draw thyself." The Apostle Paul did not consider it safe 
for Timothy to be in the company of men who would not hold 
to the very words of Jesus Christ. This same word trans- 
lated here "form" might just as well be translated "pattern" 
— hold fast to the pattern of sound words. We are told that 
one of the essential departments of every factory is the pat- 
tern department. When the pattern department burns, the 
whole factory has sustained a great loss. I would have you 
to remember that the words of the Bible are the patterns, the 



PENTECOST. 457 

forms, which make up the books of this great Book, the Bible, 
and you cannot let go of one of these forms without injuring 
your faith, and running a great risk of losing your eternal 
and immortal souls. Why have we so many churches to-day 
that are quibbling about this chapter and that chapter, and 
about this word and that word, of the Bible? Every effect 
has its cause, and the effects of the days of rationalism, and 
ungodliness in the Church of God cannot be good while the 
false reformers are willing to quibble about the very words 
of Jesus Christ. When Zwingli began to fight the words of 
Christ in the Lord's Supper, he drove the wedge into the 
Church of God that to-day has brought about a host of infi- 
dels. Why is it that the old Lutheran Church stands, and 
always will stand? Because Dr. Luther fought for the hold- 
ing fast to every word of Christ. There is true Christianity. 
That is the great thing that you are to hold fast to, — the 
Inspired Word of God, and every word of it. If I have a 
right to put the word "represents" for "is," I can turn every 
man's sentence into a lie. Jesus said, Take eat, this is My 
body — He did not say represents. Hold fast to the pattern. 
He said, Take drink, this is My blood — not represents. Hold 
fast to the forms. God knew what He wanted to say, and He 
said just exactly Avhat He did want to say. 

2. I would have you, therefore, not only to hold fast to 
the Inspired Word of God, but hold fast to the doctrines of 
the Lutheran Church. I emphasize this because the Luth- 
eran Church stands on the forms of God's Word. A man 
who will turn and twist one Avord of the Bible is no Luth- 
eran, I do not care by what name he is known. A Lutheran 
is a man who holds fast to the very form of God's Word, and 
I come to you to-day, and tell you to hold fast to the Lutheran 
Church, because the Lutheran Church stands for the form 
of God's Word. 

When I say that, I mean hold fast to the doctrines that 
are contained in the catechism which you have studied. Hold 
fast to the Augsburg Confession, which you find printed in 
your hymn books. Hold fast to the Book of Concord, that 
old Declaration of Independence, with all its wisdom, 
brought out of God's eternal Word. You have noticed in 
past years that some churches are having a great deal of 



458 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

trouble with their confessions, and they always will have 
until they bring them right down to harmonize with God's 
form, and whenever you have a confession harmonizing with 
God's own Word, you cannot change it. You do not hear 
anything about changing the Augsburg Confession; you do 
not hear anything about changing the Lutheran catechism. 
You cannot change these things until God Almighty changes 
the Bible. 

Hold fast, therefore, to these doctrines, and you can well 
hold fast to them, because you have learned them. Paul 
said to Timothy, "Hold fast the form of sound words, which 
thou hast heard of me." The apostle Paul taught Timothy, 
and kept on teaching him, until Timothy accepted Paul's 
Savior, and from that time on, Paul called him "my son" — 
"my son Timothy ;" and, in the same sense I can look, into 
your faces this morning and I can call you my sons and my 
daughters, because, as Paul said, I have begotten you anew 
through the Word of God, or the Holy Spirit. It is no 
glory to man, but, my friends, the Lord God has seen fit in all 
the ages of the past to take poor sinners, saved by grace, and 
use them to show other sinners the way to heaven, and for 
that very purpose God has called me to bring you the saving 
truth which you have heard during the months that are past. 
I have told you what God means in His holy law, how you 
are to love Him with all your heart, with all your soul, with 
all your mind, and with all your strength; I have taught 
you how you are to love your neighbor as yourself; I have 
shown you how short you have come, and therefore are sin- 
ners, born sinners, and sinners who have transgressed the 
law; I have shown you how God the Holy Ghost will not 
tolerate sin in heaven; it must be forgiven, or it must be 
punished ; sin has been punished in Jesus Christ. I have led 
you up to Calvary's hill and showed you the love of a Father 
who has given you the Lamb of God that taketh away the sins 
of the world, and in that Savior you have found your Redeem- 
er. I have shown you how poor He became, that He might 
make you rich, that you again might make others rich through 
that great mercy. I have shown you how you could not have 
come to the Savior without the Holy Ghost. I have s 7 own 
you how this same Pentecostal spirit that stirred up J era- 



PENTECOST. 459 

salem, and came through the words of prophets, then with 
fiery tongues, has come to you, has called you, and gathered 
you, and enlightened, and does sanctify, and will keep you, 
through the means of grace. I have shown you how the 
means of grace are found in the Christian Church; I have 
shown you how in the Christian Church you get forgiveness 
of sins through faith in the crucified Lord and Savior. I 
have shown you, furthermore, that these bodies of yours 
will not always remain in this life, nor will they 
always remain in the grave; they shall rise from the dead. I 
have shown you that your souls are immortal and that they 
can never cease to exist ; they must either have eternal life, 
or must eternally be dying, and have eternal death. I have 
shown you how the good Lord has accepted those of you who 
were baptized in His holy name ; I have shown you who have 
not yet been baptized, how He wants to make a covenant 
with you, and forever be your Father, and you shall be His 
children ; I have shown you how He has given you the prom- 
ise — a He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved," and 
the warning, "He that believeth not shall be damned." I 
have shown you how not only you should be baptized as par- 
ents, but how you shall bring your little children, for God 
said , "Repent and be baptized, every one of you in the name 
of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive 
the gift of the Holy Ghost ; for the promise is unto you, and 
to your children." I have shown you how this good Lord, 
when you are born again, by the means of grace, wants you to 
grow stronger day by day, in His Holy Supper ; how He has 
given His body that you might eat, and His blood, that you 
might drink — not this represents My body or represents 
My blood, but blood is blood, and My is My, and bread and 
wine are the visible means in which and through which God 
in His mercy gives Himself to you, gives His blood that you 
might drink for the remission of your sins. I have shown 
you how you should see to it that you stand, lest you fall, 
and these are the things to which I want you to hold fast. 
3. Hold fast, not only to these doctrines, but hold fast to 
the Lord Jesus Christ. When I said a while ago, hold fast 
to the Word of God, and hold fast to the doctrines of the 
Lutheran Church, i die* ^ ^ipan that you are to take hold 



460 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

of a building ; I did not mean that you are to hold to a book ; 
I meant simply to tell you that in this Book you will find 
Jesus, the Lamb of God that taketh away the sins of the 
world — hold fast to Him. 

Hold fast to His divinity. He is God of gods. He is the 
Son of the Father. He is Alpha and Omega, the beginning 
and the end — yesterday, to-day and forever. Hold fast to 
the Son of God. 

And then hold fast to the Son of man. Remember that 
this Son of God for your sakes became man. Kemember that 
it was for your sins that He became a child, that He might 
put Himself under the law and die in your stead. 

Remember that this God-man is your all in all — Christ 
and Christ only! Hold fast to Him, for it is He who said, 
"Come unto Me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I 
will give jou rest." It is He that said, "As I live, saith the 
Lord, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that 
the wicked should turn from his way and live." It is He 
that said, "Him that cometh unto Me I will in no wise cast 
out." It is He that said, "Be thou faithful until death, and I 
will give thee a crown of eternal life." Hold fast to Him. 

II. And how shall we hold fast? 

1. Hold fast by recognizing that you cannot do this with 
your own strength. You have learned in the explanation of 
the third article of the Creed, "I believe that I cannot by my 
own reason or strength believe in Jesus Christ my Lord, or 
come to Him, but the Holy Ghost has called me by the Gos- 
pel, enlightened me with His gifts, sanctified and kept me in 
the true faith, etc. There you have the whole truth. Birds 
without wings can fly, animals without feet can run, better 
than man can come to Christ by his own power. If, there- 
fore, you wish to know how to hold fast to these things 
that I have mentioned to you this morning, first of all recog- 
nize your own weakness. 

You cannot come to Christ by your own power. No man 
ever has come to Christ that way. Do you know of a single 
person in all the world that got up by his own power and 
came to Jesus? I never heard of any, and if you ask those 
who have come to Christ, and are with Him to-day, How do 
you stay? How do you hold fast? not one of them will say, 



PENTECOST. 461 

I do it by my own power. If I am a Christian to-day, I am 
one because I do not hold fast with my own power. There 
is no Christian on earth to-day who is true to his Master, 
who would for one moment say, I hold fast by my own power. 

The real truth of it is that there are many people who 
have gone away from Christ just because they tried to hold 
fast by their own power. Paul refers to them in the very 
next verse, when he says, "This thou knowest that all they 
which are in Asia be turned away from me." Why did they 
turn away? Because they began to think they could help 
themselves. If you think that from to-day on you are going 
to be faithful to your God by your own power, it will not be 
long until you have gone away from the Church, it will not be 
long until you have gone away from Jesus; it will not be 
long until you have gone away from eternal life. If you 
want to hold fast, recognize this weakness in yourself. 

2. And not only is it true that you cannot come by your 
own power, and that those who have come do not claim that 
they came by their own power, and that those who claim it, 
have gone away from Him again, but I would say, in the 
second place, if you wish to hold fast, correctly learn and 
recognize the strength of your enemies, and let go of them. 
If I wanted some one to lead me out of this house, how foolish 
it would be if I should take hold of this pulpit, and ask some 
one to lead me. How can I hold fast to some one to lead me 
out, and hold fast to the church as a building, at the same 
time? Suppose a man were to step upon the step of a train 
which is now pulling out for New York, with the intention 
of going home; suppose a strong man were to walk up to 
that man on the step of the train starting out, and take him 
by the hand, and hold him, and not let go. The train is 
moving on, the strong man cannot follow ; the man standing 
on the step of the train must do one of two things, he must 
either let go of the strong man, or must let go of the train, 
and if he does not, one or the other must give way, and if the 
strong hand holds fast, the weaker man must let go of the 
train when it is running, and dashes down, and fractures his 
skull, and kills himself. You recognize what I mean. To 
hold fast to the train to go home, he must let go of the strong 
hand trying to hold him back. And just so, dear friends, I 



462 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

would have you to remember there are three strong hands 
trying to hold you back all through life. 

Satan was among the sons of God in the days of Job; 
Satan was in the garden of Eden in the days of Adam and 
Eve; Satan was on the mountain when Jesus was tempted, 
and Satan is going to try, boys, to lead you to hell, and Satan 
is going to try, girls, to lead you astray : Satan is going to 
try right now to lead you all away from the Father, and 1 
would have you remember that if you are going to hold fast, 
remember the strength of the enemy. 

Eemember not only the strength of Satan, but remember 
the strength of the world. There is not a day that we do not 
see a young Christian living a life that is dual, trying to 
serve God on Sunday and serve the world throughout the 
week. The same ones that are sitting in our Sunday-schools, 
trying to teach children, and lead them to heaven on Sunday, 
think it is all right to be walking with the world during the 
week. How many people say: Come on, let us eat, drink 
and be merry; you are young yet, and now is the time to 
sow your wild oats ; now is the time to commit sin ; now is 
the time to enjoy the world. Whatsoever, dear class, you 
sow, you are going to reap. When a man sows oats, he will 
reap oats ; if he sows wheat, he will reap wheat ; if he plants 
corn he will cut corn in the fall, and when he sows in sin he 
is going to reap hell. Do not forget that. Eemember, the 
world is not your friend; the world is striving to lead you 
away from the means of grace ; the world is striving to lead 
your soul astray. 

And you have got just enough of the flesh within you that 
is enmity toward God. Something says, Yes, I would like to 
have a good time; something in every one of us says, What 
is the use, I would love to go and eat, drink and be merry ; 
and that flesh, and that world, and that devil — this three- 
fold power — would damn every one of you if it possibly 
could, and therefore, I urge upon you this morning to recog- 
nize the power of the enemy, if you wish to hold fast to these 
things I have mentioned. 

3" How can you hold fast, then, if you are so weak your- 
self, and the enemy is so powerful? Here is the key to the 
whole situation : "Hold fast the form of sound words, which 



PENTECOST. 4G3 

thou hast heard of me, ill faith and love which is in Christ 
Jesus. That good thing which was committed unto thee keep 
by the Holy Ghost which dwelleth in us" God the Holy 
Spirit comes to us, as you have correctly learned, through the 
means of grace; He comes to you through the AVord of God 
Ltself; He comes to you through this Word connected with 
water in Holy Baptism ; He comes to you through this Word 
connected with bread and wine in the Lord's Supper. "There 
are three that bear witness in earth, the Spirit, and the water, 
and the blood, and these three agree in one." When the Holy 
Spirit comes through the means of grace, and it is His inten- 
tion to dwell in you, and when He dwells in you, and you in 
God, then you have Almighty power in you — it is not yours, it 
is the power of the Holy Ghost; it is that power which Paul 
referred to when he said, "I am not ashamed of the Gospel 
of Jesus Christ, for it is the power of God unto salvation to 
every one that believeth." I would urge upon you, there- 
fore, to hear God's Word. Do not let a Sunday come in your 
lives, if you are not on your sick bed that you do not hear 
a sermon; do not let a Sunday pass without hearing 
God's Word on your sick bed, if you cannot leave home. 
D.o not let a day pass without reading God's message, 
the message of the Holy Spirit, that He may dwell in you, 
and, dwelling in you, do not forget for a single day your 
baptismal covenant. Some people have great parties when 
the day of their birth comes. I would have you remember 
the day of your baptism, the day of your regeneration, as 
a greater day than the day of your first birth. I would 
have you to keep in mind that covenant which God on that 
day made with you, that He would forever be a Father to 
you, and you shall be His children. He never will break 
His covenant; you may break yours; therefore, hold fast 

— hold fast to the Holy Spirit who wishes to dwell in you, 
through the means of grace. 

And when the Lord's Supper is celebrated be found there 

— do not wander away. That child that does not come home 
to eat any more is on a dangerous path ; that child that is 
not willing to eat at mother's table is going astray; and 
I say to you, that whenever you find that you are not willing 
to come to God's altar and receive His body and His blood, 



464 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

you are going away — you need that strength to hold fast. 
Make use of the means of grace. 

Only the Holy Spirit can give you strength in faith, 
strength in love, and strength in loyalty. "Hold fast the 
form of sound words which thou hast heard of me in faith 
. ." Faith is the hand that takes hold of God. Faith is 
the hand that is called upon to hold fast. Hold fast to Jesus, 
and you never can go wrong, for He says, "I am the Way, 
and the Truth, and the Life, and no man cometh to the Father 
but by Me." In crossing the Alps there are paths so narrow 
that the guide takes a rope and ties it around him, and then 
around the next, and the next and the next, and they are all 
tied to the same rope, and he leads along the path, where he 
goes they all go, and safely cross, and no stranger can go 
over that path alone. And so I say to you, tie yourselves to 
Jesus Christ, go with Him wherever He goes. Hold fast 
with the hand of faith — the hand that nothing can break 
loose, for you hold by the strength of the Holy Spirit that 
dwelleth in you. 

Hold fast, too, with the hand of love. It is God's wish 
that we should have great love for humanity. Love your 
enemies, says Jesus Christ. This thing of loving our friends 
is not Christian, it is simply human ; it is not simply human, 
it belongs to irrational animals. There is no animal that does 
not love its young; there isn't an animal that does not love 
another animal ; there isn't a heathen on God's earth so low 
that he does not love another heathen ; but it takes Christ in 
the heart, it takes the Holy Spirit in the heart to love an 
enemy. And just as Jesus on the cross of Calvary prayed 
for those that drove the nails through His hands and through 
His feet, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they 
do," with God the Holy Spirit dwelling in you, you have to be 
Christ-like, and hold fast to Him, and say with Him, O 
Father, forgive all my enemies, for they know not what they 
do. Love your enemies. 

And then, be loyal. The apostle Paul summed up every- 
thing that he had taught Timothy in these beautiful words. 
"That good thing ivhich tvas committed unto thee keep by the 
Holy Ghost which divelleth in us" That good, thing. It may 
be that some of vou are thinking of wealth. You know very 



PENTECOST. 4G5 

well von cannot hold fast to it ; you have to let it go ; it may be 
that some of you are possessing to-day the very best of health, 
but remember the day is coming when you will lie down help- 
less. The time is coming, young men, and it may come very 
soon, when those poor bodies of yours can stand up no longer. 
Just the other day the father of one of your own number said 
to me, "If I could only get the strength to walk on crutches 
in this room, I would be satisfied." How many of us would 
be satisfied to do that? Oh, I tell you, there is a time coming 
when, if we could just lift up the hand once more, we should 
be satisfied, but it will not go up. You have got to let go of 
these bodies. You have got to let go of wealth; you have 
got to let go of health; you have got to let go of human 
friends; but there is one thing that you never need let 
go of, it is that good thing — that good thing that Jesus 
purchased on Calvary, — your eternal life. O class, hold fast 
to eternal life! This, to me, is a solemn moment. I am 
standing here before your immortal souls, and it does seem 
to me that you never can forget what I tell you to-day. 1 
never can forget that sermon which my pastor preached to 
me when I was confirmed ; it seems to me I can hear the old 
text to-day: "Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give 
thee a crown of life." Oh! I have had to let so many 
things go since that, but, by God's help, I have never let go 
of "that good thing." Hold it fast, no difference what may 
come in the future — let go of everything rather than eternal 
life. On that great day when you and I stand before God, 
on that great day Oh! what a joy will be in my heart, if I 
can say: Father, here are some of the children that by Thy 
grace and mercy I have brought to Thee. What a joy it will 
be if I can say : Here are the men and women who heard Thy 
Gospel; I have laid my hands on their heads; they have 
promised to be faithful until death ; here they are; O Father, 
give them that good thing, give it to them. And I can see 
you on that day walking up the golden streets of heaven, with 
joy that is everlasting, saying to one another, "Here we have 
got that good thing that no man can take from us." Hold 
fast! But, Oh, the sorrow, if I should notice that one of 
you is missing. Oh! dear children, let none of you be 
30 



466 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

missing oil that day ! I have prayed for you ; I have 
worked for you; 1 have shown you how to find that good 
thing; I have prayed God to-day to impress these words on 
your souls, that, whatever else may be lost, you may hold 
fast to the Inspired Word of God; hold fast to the old 
Church, which stands on God's eternal Word; hold fast to 
Jesus Christ ; hold fast not only to the words, but hold fast 
to all the good things that I have mentioned this morning, 
by the power of the Pentecostal Spirit, and now, go to Him 
in prayer; do not let one day pass, nor one hour, without 
imploring heaven that you may live, not only a life, but the 
most useful life that can be lived on earth; not simply ex- 
ist, but live intensely, for the glory of God and for the wel- 
fare of humanity, and that good thing hold fast ! Hold fast ! 

That Holy Book Divine. 

So deep from first to last, 
Whole Book, each Book, each word, 

Hold fast; hold fast; hold fast. 

The doctrines in that Book 

Our Luther found at last 
And gave them to the world, 

Hold fast ; hold fast ; hold fast. 

To Christ and not to man 

To Christ "the first and last," 
To Him you cling for life. 

Hold fast; hold fast; hold fast. 

The bird that has no wings 

Must not sail on the mast; 
Nor must the human soul 

By its own strength hold fast. 

Nor must it hold to hands 

That pull to hell at last; 
But cling to "that good thing," 

Eternal life — hold fast. — Amen. 



TRINITY. 



WHO ARE HEATHEN? 



John 3- 1-15. 

^^/^^THERE was a man of the Pharisees, named Nicodemus, a ruler of 
the Jews : The same came to Jesus by night, and said unto Him, 
Rabbi, we know that Thou art a Teacher come from God, for no 
man can do these miracles that Thou doest except God be with him. Jesus 
answered, and said unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man 
be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. Nicodemus saith unto 
Him, How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter the second 
time into his mother's womb, and be born? Jesus answered, Verily, verily, 
I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he can- 
not enter into the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh; 
and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Marvel not that I said unto 
thee, Ye must be born again. The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou 
nearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither 
it goeth; so is every one that is born of the Spirit. Nicodemus answered, 
and said unto Him, How can these things be? Jesus answered and said 
unto him, Art thou a master of Israel, and knowest not these things? Ver- 
ily, verily, I say unto thee, We speak that we do know, and testify that we 
have seen; and ye receive not our witness. If I have told you earthly things, 
and ye believe not, how shall ye believe if I tell you of heavenly things? 
And no man hath ascended up to heaven, but He that came down from 
heaven, even the Son of man which is in heaven. And as Moses lifted up 
the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up : 
that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have eternal life." 

Sanctify us, O Lord, through Thy Truth; 
Thy Word is Truth. Amen. 



Dear Christian Friends: — 

I want to give you three facts and three questions: 
Is there one in this house to-night who knows just ex- 
actly w T hen he was born? Not one. Then it is a fact that 
you were born before you knew it. I want to give you 
another fact: You not only were born before you knew it, 

467 



468 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

but you were born before you either entered this world or 
saw it. There is not one of you that saw this world before 
you were born; there is not one of you that entered this 
world before you were born. These are such self-evident 
facts that they are not worth dwelling upon, and yet they lie 
at the very foundation of some of the truths that we must 
learn to-day. Still a third fact, and that is that just as 
surely as you had to be born before you saw this world 
and before you entered it, just as surely as you were born 
before you knew it, just so surely you must be born again 
from above, from on high, from the very beginning, as 
the Greek word "anothen" teaches us, before you can 
either see or enter the kingdom of God. One is just as true 
as the other. It was this great truth that made Mcodemus 
stand before Jesus and say, "How can these things be?" 

I will not only show you these three great facts, but I 
will put before you three great questions. People are some- 
times asking, What will become of little children, not 
baptized, when they die? That is not the question. The 
great question for you and me to settle is this, What is 
going to become of you and me, if we let our children die 
without baptism? Do not put the blame on the child. 
If I were to let a child of mine die without baptism, my 
conscience would give me no rest, and I want the question 
to come home to you to-night, What is going to become 
of you if you neglect such a plain command of God? For 
just as surely as you were born before you knew it, and 
had to be born before you saw this world, or entered it, 
just so surely your child must be born again, by water and 
the Spirit, says the God who cannot lie, before it can enter 
heaven; and thereby He does not say what He is going 
to do with the child if you neglect it, but how can you dare 
to neglect it? God said with His own oath, "Verily, verily, 
I say unto you, Except a man be born of water and the 
Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God" — and 
before that He said, "Except a man be born again, he can- 
not see the kindgom of God." When I tell you that the 
child that never was born neither saw this world nor 
entered it, it is plain, and yet you would try to make me 
believe that a man can live in this world without beinc; 



TRINITY. 4()9 

bom again, and then die and go straight to heaven. He 
will never go. He could not see heaven, if he were there. 
He is spiritually blind. 

Another question that weighs on our minds, or ought 
to weigh on them. Some people are putting the question 
every day, What will become of the poor heathen if they 
do not get the Gospel? That is not the question, no more 
than the question is, What will become of the babe if it 
dies without baptism? The question that is in my mind, 
and ought to be in yours, is this, What will become of you 
and me, enjoying the Gospel of Jesus Christ as we do, if we 
do not preach this Gospel to the heathen lands? Contrary 
to God's commandment, "Go ye into all the world and 
preach the Gospel to every creature," we are satisfied if 
we have a church of our own, and a Sunday-school of our 
own, and a large congregation of our own, and let the poor, 
miserable heathen go down to death in ignorance, and 
perish, and we do not seem to care. What will become 
of us if we do not arouse our consciences to the great need 
of missionaries all over the world? 

That leads me to a third question, and the question 
which I shall make the subject of my text to-night: Who 
are heathen? I am not going to use that word in the 
worst sense. I would have you remember that there have 
been heathen in the world that were so high above some 
professed Christians that it would make them dizzy if 
they were to reach that height. Let us not forget that 
Aristotle was a heathen ; let us not forget that Plato was a 
heathen ; let us not forget that Alexander the Great did not 
know who his God was. Do not, therefore, from a worldly 
standpoint take offiense if I should call you a heathen, but 
just as the children of Israel divided the world into Israel- 
ites and Gentiles, just so I would divide the world into 
Christian and heathen. Then we put the question : 

WHO ARE HEATHEN? 

and may God, the Holy Spirit, in the words of our text, 
answer it to the satisfaction of every one of us. I would 
answer on the basis of our text: 



470 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

I. All adults who are not baptized are heathen. 
II. All children that are not baptized are heathen. 

I. All adults who are not baptized are heathen. If 
there ever was a man who was a man of honor and respect, 
it was Mcodemus. He was not only a member of the Su- 
preme Court of Jerusalem, but he was the Chairman; he 
was one of the great leaders, and this man felt that some- 
thing was wrong. While others were sleeping, he could 
not sleep, and he gets up during the night and goes to find 
Jesus, and goes there with the purpose in his heart of 
learning how to be saved, for he recognized by what he had 
either seen Jesus do, or by what he had heard Him say, 
that after all, though a member of the Supreme Court, the 
highest court on God's earth, that he was still a heathen. 
And the Lord Jesus soon let him know what he was by 
saying, virtually: Mcodenius, you have been born in sin. 
Mcodemus, you have added sin to sin. Mcodenius, you 
have never fully accepted Me as your Savior, and there- 
fore, you are still an unbaptized heathen. 

1. "There was a man of the Pharisees, named Mco- 
denius, a ruler of the Jews. The same came to Jesus by 
night, and said unto Him, Rabbi, we know (the Sanhedrin) 
that Thou art a teacher come from God; for no man can do 
these miracles that Thou doest, except God be with him." 
Those were the words of this man, but in his heart he had 
a question which he failed to ask, and that question was, 
How can I be saved? — and so Jesus answers the question 
in his heart instead of the question of his mouth, and said 
unto him: "Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man 
be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God." In 
other words, "Mcodemus, you have been born in sin," for 
He goes on down a little further and says, "That which is 
born of the flesh is flesh." Mcodemus' father was flesh, and 
his mother was flesh, and they were sinful flesh, and this 
child born of sinful flesh was a sinner, and he knew it, and 
God knew it. 

You will notice the contrast in this text between what 
men know and what God knows. Mcodemus came to Je- 
sus by night, with the proud "We know." — "We, the great 



TRINITY. 471 

Supreme Court of this Holy Land, know that Thou art a 
teacher come from God." In reply to the great "We know" 
of the Sanhedrin, the Lord Jesus Christ answers for the 
Trinity, "Verily, verily, I say unto thee, that We speak that 
A\\^ do know, and testify that We have seen, and ye receive 
not Our witness." That same Lord God who talks in the 
plural here, is the same Triune God who said, "Let us 
make man in Our image." This Triune God is the one we 
worship. This is called Trinity Sunday, because in the be- 
ginning of the Church year we spoke of the love of the 
Father that gave His Son Jesus Christ; and then, on Good 
Friday and Easter we talked of the love of Jesus Christ 
that gave His life for the world, and from that time on 
until Pentecost we talked of the love of the Holy Spirit, 
the great Comforter, who calls, and gathers, enlightens, 
sanctifies and keeps us, and from now on until the end of 
the Church year, we are going to talk about the great doc- 
trines of the Triune God, and therefore, we call this Sun- 
day Trinity Sunday. This Triune God contrasts what He 
knows w T ith what men know, and says to Mcodemus: You 
boast of what you know, and I want you to understaand 
right here that you do know that you are born in sin; you 
do know that which is born of flesh is flesh; you do know 
that if you go down to the river Jordan, and find the river 
muddy, and dip out a bucket of water, you have a bucket 
of muddy water; you do know that if you go to a spring of 
clear water and take out a tinful of water, you have water 
in the tin of the kind that is in the spring; and so is man, 
born of a sinful father and of a sinful mother — that which 
is born of flesh is flesh, and unless you are born again you 
cannot see the kingdom of God; and unless you are born 
again, of water and of the Spirit, you cannot enter into 
the kingdom of heaven. You know this, and We, the 
Father, Son and Holy Ghost, know it. Therefore, Mcode- 
mus, you are still a heathen. And so I say of every one of 
you here, on the authority of this God's Book that lies be- 
fore me, that we are by nature children of wrath; that 
there is none good, no, not one; that except you are born of 
water and of the Spirit, you cannot see nor enter into the 
kingdom of heaven. 



472 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

2. But Mcodeinus was no babe any more; he had 
reached the age that allowed him to hold the highest posi- 
tion in the great Ecclesiastical Court of Jerusalem; he 
was a man of years; and in these years he had not only 
been born in sin, but he had added sin to sin; he had 
broken one commandment after the other, despite the 
fact that he thought he was keeping them perfectly. He 
had not only broken one commandment after the other, 
but he had sinned year after year; and, mark well, when 
God forgives sins, He forgives them all, or none at all. 
Therefore this man Mcodemus could not sleep any more, 
lying there on his bed in that midnight hour, he found no 
rest for his soul; he realized that some of these nights he 
would sleep his last sleep, and what if he should pass into 
eternity, and not be saved? He said, I will arise; I will 
find the Savior at night when the Sanhedrin is not in 
session; I will go when men cannot see me. He did not 
have the courage yet to come out boldly and say, I am on 
the side of God, but deep down in his heart he was be- 
coming a secret disciple of Jesus. He said, I have added 
sin to sin; and Jesus looked at him in that midnight hour, 
and said, Mcodemus, you know and We know — the 
Father, Son and Holy Ghost — that you have not only been 
born in sin, but you have added sin to sin, and unless you 
are born again, you cannot enter into the kingdom of 
heaven. Mcodemus, you are still a heathen. 

3. More than that, the Lord Jesus Christ, knowing 
that Mcodemus was well acquainted with the Old Testa- 
ment history referred to something that took place back 
in the wilderness. You will remember that when Moses 
was leading the children of Israel across the wilderness 
at one time they began to rebel against God,. until the fiery 
serpents were sent in their midst, one after the other was 
bitten, one after the other was dying; they cried to God 
for help; they did just as you are going to do; you are not 
praying when you are well; you are not praying when 
everything is moving along, when you ought to thank God, 
but some day, when you are lying at the door of death, 
you will call for help; and so these men, lying at death's 
door, cried to God for help, and God said, Moses, go and 



TRINITY. 473 

make a brazen serpent, and put it up on a pole, and tell 
them to look at that brazen serpent, and then the bites 
of the serpents shall not hurt them, and they shall live. 
Undoubtedly there were some of them too stubborn to look, 
and died; but others looked, and lo! the bites did not hurt 
them, and they lived. Now then, says the Lord to Nico- 
demus, That was only a type; that was a type of Him to 
whom you are talking now; the time is coming, Nicode- 
mus, when they are going to lift Me up; they are going 
to put Me up on a pole; they are going to drive some nails 
through My hands and through My feet; they are going to 
drive the spear into My breast; I have left My throne on 
high and all My possessions, and have lived as a man on 
earth, and am here to die for you; and, know this, though 
you have heard My sermons, and seen My miracles, you are 
still trusting in your own righteousness instead of Me; 
you have not accepted Me; you are still a heathen, Nico- 
deinus. "As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, 
even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whosoever 
believeth in Him should not perish, but have eternal life." 
And how many there are all around us yet that have 
been born in sin, and have added sin to sin, and have 
never been baptized! And why not? I will tell you why. 
Because you have not fully accepted Christ as your Savior 
yet. Do not tell me that you believe in Christ and you are 
not going to be baptized, for if you do so, you know you 
are not telling the truth. A man cannot be a child of God, 
and believe His message, and believe His commandments, 
and then stubbornly stand back and say, I will not obey. 
Just as surely as you are not baptized now, just so surely 
you have rejected the Lord Jesus Christ, up to this hour. 
And what are you? A good plain heathen, that is what 
you are. Who are the heathen? Every adult in the world 
who is not baptized in the name of the Father, Son and 
Holy Ghost. "Go ye into all the world and make disciples 
of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, 
and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost." Now, if you are 
not baptized, it is certain that you have not accepted Jesus, 
and if you have not accepted Him, what are you, pray tell 



474 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

me, what are you? There is only one answer — You are a 
heathen. 

II. This text of mine refers not only to adults, but re- 
fers to the human race. When Jesus said, "Except a man 
be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God," and, 
again, "Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, 
he cannot enter into the kingdom of God/ 7 He did not use 
the word that means man in distinction from woman, nor 
a word that means man in distinction from children, but 
the little Greek word "Tis," which means any one;- as the 
German people say "jemand." "Jemand" means any living- 
human being. — "Except a human being be born again, 
he cannot see the kingdom of God," and, "Except he be 
born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into 
the kingdom of God." If adults are heathen because they 
are not baptized, so are children. Let me lead you for a 
few moments to three different children in three different 
parts of the world. 

1. First of all, I will take you down to the w 7 orst 
heathen country in this great world; I will show you there 
a tribe of the lowest of all heathen. The father is heathen; 
the mother is heathen, and all the neighbors are heathen — 
Cannibals, who live by eating human beings — people not 
dressed as we are — people living in the lowest form of 
idolatry — people who either do not worship at all, or, if 
they do, they worship gods of stone, or the lower animals 

— people who do not know that there is such a thing as a 
Bible in the world — people who never heard who it was 
that made the sun, the moon, and the stars — people who 
never know where to go when in trouble, for they never 
heard of such a thing as a real prayer in the name of Jesus 

— people who never heard of this only Savior who died on 
Calvary — people who are living in the darkness of igno- 
rance and superstition, and now, among such people, let 
me show you a babe, just born. What is that babe? 
What is it? I can get the consent of the whole world, 
from one end to the other, that that little babe is a heathen 

— nobody would deny it; it is an unbaptized child, born 
of heathen parents — as Jesus said, That which is born of 
flesh is flesh. 



TRINITY. 475 

2. Let me take you now to another home, and that 
home will be right in the city of Mansfield — a home in 
which there is a father who has never been baptized and 
does not go to church unless it is simply to go with com- 
pany; he cares nothing for the Bible; he cares nothing for 
the ministry; he cares nothing for Sunday-school; he cares 
nothing for pra}-er; he never has offered a prayer to God 
in all his life; he has a wife just like him; they fit well 
together because they both are fighting God. They have a 
home in which there is a cradle, and in that cradle lies a 
little babe a day old. What is it? Answ T er that question, 
What is it? The whole world says of that little babe born 
over in Africa, It is a heathen. Let me ask you a few ques- 
tions : Which is the worse heathen of the two, — the father 
over in Africa who never heard of a Bible, who never heard 
of the true God, who never saw a church, who never heard 
of Jesus, who knows nothing of heaven or hell, a father of 
a little child, a mother over there just like the father — 
which is worse, those two parents, or the two who live in 
Mansfield, within a square of a church of God, with a Bible 
unknown lying on their table, with Christian influences 
all around them, with grandfathers, or grandmothers that 
were children of God, with legacies left to them which they 
threw away and trampled upon — which is the worse 
heathen of the two? 

A few people would say that this little babe is a 
heathen; many would say it is not, because it was born 
in Mansfield, when the parents are a thousand times more 
heathen than those that would love to be something more, 
and cannot. Did you ever in all your life see a child that 
was born better than its parents naturally? That which is 
born of flesh is flesh. Our child, begotten by us as parents, 
cannot possibly, by nature, be above us. If then, heathen 
parents in the city of Mansfield, who are more responsible 
to-day, and will be more responsible on the Judgment Day, 
are more heathen than in the darkest Africa, what is their 
little child, unbaptized? Why, you say, That poor little 
babe cannot help it that father and mother were such un- 
godly parents. No! nor could the poor little babe in Africa 
help it. This babe that lives in yonder alley, with skin 



476 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

black as night, cannot help it that it was born black. The 
real truth of it is, my friends, whether the world acknowl- 
edges it or not, little children in Christian lands, born of 
heathen parents, unbaptized, are heathen, and you cannot 
make anything else out of them, except as the Gospel will 
do so hereafter. 

3. Now, I am going to take you to another family, and 
this time we will let it be a minister of the Gospel and his 
dear wife, opposed to infant baptism. A little child is 
born into that home. What is it? Is that child, just be- 
cause its father happened to be a preacher, and its mother 
a preacher's wife, born a Christian? Nobody believes that. 
Even the preacher himself does not believe that, because 
if he knows anything about God's Word, he knows that 
Jesus said, "There is none good, no, not one;" he knows 
that the Word of God says r "Behold, I was shapen in in- 
iquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me;" he knows 
the Bible says, "We are all by nature children of wrath;" 
he knows that Jesus said, "That which is born of flesh is 
flesh." In other words, there never was a child on earth 
born a Christian. We all admit that. Now, if the child is 
not born a Christian, what is the child of the minister and his 
wife who themselves reject infant baptism? What is that 
child? It sounds a little hard, but it is a fact, it is a 
heathen. 

Not only is that true of the child of the minister who 
rejects infant baptism, but my own babes were all heathen 
until they were baptized. Do not say, He talks rough to 
us. I am talking just the same about myself. I claim that 
my children and myself were heathen until we were born 
of water and of the Spirit. 

You all admit that little children are not born Chris- 
tians by natural birth. Another question — That little 
child of parents who will not have it baptized, is it a 
church member? Why not? I have always pitied the chil- 
dren of people who do not believe in infant baptism. Where 
do their children belong? The poor little children want 
to belong to church; they have more theology in them- 
selves than their parents have; they know that God wants 
them in heaven; they know that God wants them brought 



TRINITY. 477 

to Him; they know that God commanded that the whole 
world should be made Christian by baptism, and still the 
poor innocent little babes are kept out of church member- 
ship, and when they die the preacher says they went to 
heaven, as if heaven were not as good as the church. In 
the name of uncommon sense, how are you going to admit 
people to heaven that you will not take into the church? 
Some people sometimes, even calling themselves Lutheran, 
seem to apologize for the fact that we believe in infant bap- 
tism. It was the doctrine of the Old Testament that little 
children should be brought into the Church of God when 
they were eight days old; it is the doctrine of the New Tes- 
tament that little children should at once be brought into 
the Church of God. It took sixty years to finish the New 
Testament, and you cannot find a single case where the 
parents were baptized, then years afterwards a child bap- 
tized; you will find Ave cases where whole families were 
baptized; you will find the command covers everybody — 
"make disciples of all nations ;" you will find, furthermore, 
that God Himself said, so plain that it cannot be mis- 
understood, that, "he that offendeth one of these little 
ones, which believe in Me, it were better for him that a 
millstone were hanged about his neck, and he were 
drowned in the depths of the sea/' and then you still won- 
der whether the little child has the right to be baptized, 
or not. If we are not Christian because we were baptized 
in infancy, I am no Christian to-day. And that is not all. 
Ninety-three per cent of all the Christians in the world 
are no Christians, if infant baptism is not God's baptism. 
And so, my dear friends, after all it makes no difference 
whether this heathen child happens to lie in a Christian 
home, or whether in an ungodly home, whether it hap- 
pened to be born in Mansfield, or over in Africa, it is a 
child born of the flesh, and that which is born of flesh is 
flesh, and except it be born again it cannot enter the king- 
dom of God, and if God in His mercy has another way of 
taking them to heaven when we do not do our duty, He 
will do it. But what will become of us, if we neglect these 
children of ours? 



478 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 



CONCLUSION. 



This is no time to sleep. It was no time for Mcodemus 
to sleep that night; there was something more important 
than sleeping; there was something more important than 
the Sanhedrin; there was an immortal soul at stake, and 
little did he rest until he heard the wonderful news that a 
man can be born again without being born a second time 
of his mother. Mcodemus was born again. Who was it 
that afterwards stepped up to the cross of Calvary and took 
Jesus down? Was not one of them Mcodemus? Was it 
not that man that went out that night, who said in his 
own soul, This is no time to sleep? And so I say to you 
all this morning, if you are not yet baptized in the name 
of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, this is no time to sleep. 

If you are an adult, repent of your sins, and believe in 
the Lord Jesus Christ, and be baptized in the name of the 
Father, Son and Holy Ghost, and keep on repenting until 
you die. Some people think infant baptism cannot be 
right, because we are to repent, and then be baptized, just 
as though we are to stop repenting after we are baptized. 
Baptized adults should keep on repenting as often as they 
sin, and be faithful until death. 

And then, when you are a child of God, and keep on 
repenting of your sins, and being faithful, then bring, your 
little children and give them to God, and, as they grow up 
and sin, teach them also to repent, as you do, and keep 
on repenting until they die, and we all go home to God. 

Oh! to be saved is more necessary than to sleep. When 
Mcodemus wanted to be saved, he found the Savior, and if 
you want to be baptized, you know where to go; you do 
not need to get up at twelve o'clock at night and run 
around over the hills of Mansfield to find Jesus Christ; you 
can find His messenger within a very short distance of 
where you live; you can find him in the morning; you can 
find him at noon; you can find him in the evening; you 
can find him at night; and my advice to you is this: Stop 
being heathen. Come out on the side of God, old and 
young, and be faithful unto death, and at last receive the 
crown of eternal life; and then you will know what it is 



TRINITY. 479 

to have been a heathen, and you will know what it is not 
to be a heathen. May God help us all to be Christian! 
There is only one right way to live — to be a Christian. 
There is only one right way to die — to be a Christian. 
There is only one right place to spend eternity — it is the 
Christian home. "He that believeth and is baptized shall 
be saved." Amen. 

PRAYER. 

O God, our Heavenly Father, we thank Thee for this beautiful day, 
and for the privilege of speaking in Thy glorious name in this hour, and 
now, as there are only seven days more left until we are coming together 
with the avowed purpose of clearing this, Thy temple, of a debt which is 
small compared with the congregation, we pray Thee, O God, that Thou wilt 
stir up every heart and every soul to be willing to do something for Thy 
glory — not too little, and not too much. O God, do Thou direct us in all 
the affairs of life, that we can make this our hourly prayer : Lord, plan 
it all, plan it all for us. We pray Thee especially that Thou wilt impress 
this message of the hour on the hearts of all people, and help us to realize 
more and more the great necessity of bringing our little children just as 
early as possible to the loving Savior who said, "Suffer the little children 
to come unto Me, and forbid them not, for of such is the kingdom of heaven." 
O God, help us to realize what is meant by these words "of such" — of 
such as Thou hast blessed — of such as have been brought to Thee. Help 
us to realize that Thou hast given us a way to bring them to Thee, that 
Thou hast said, O Savior, "Go ye into all the world, and make disciples of 
all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and 
of the Holy Ghost," and thereby we know how to bring them to Thee. 
Yes, hear our prayer, for Jesus' sake, who taught us to pray : 

Our Father, who art in heaven : Hallowed by Thy name ; Thy kingdom 
come; Thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven. Give us, this day, our 
daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass 
against us. Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For Thine 
is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever and ever. Amen. 



FIRST SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY 



NINE REASONS WHY RICH AND POOR SHOULD BE SAVED. 



Luke 16: 19-31. 



il^"f HERE was a certain rich man, which was clothed in purple and 
fine linen, and fared sumptuously every day; and there was a cer- 
tain beggar named Lazarus, which was laid at his gate, full of 
sores, and desiring to be fed with the crumbs which fell from the rich man's 
table; moreover, the dogs came and licked his sores. And it came to pass 
that the beggar died, and was carried by the angels into Abraham's bosom. 
The rich man also died, and was buried; and in hell he lift up his eyes, 
being in torments, and seeth Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom. 
And he cried and said, Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Laz- 
arus, that he may dip the tip of his finger in water, and cool' my tongue; 
for I am tormented in this flame. But Abraham said, Son, remember that 
thou in thy lifetime receivedst thy good things, and likewise Lazarus evil 
things; but now he is comforted, and thou art tormented. And beside all 
this, between us and you there is a great gulf fixed, so that they which would 
pass from hence to you cannot; neither can they pass to us, that would come 
from thence. Then said he, I pray thee, therefore, father, that thou wouldst 
send him to my father's house; for I have five brethren; that he may tes- 
tify unto them, lest ,they also come into this place of torment. Abraham 
saith unto him, They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them. 
And he said, Nay, Father Abraham, but if one went unto them from the 
dead, they will repent. And he said unto him, If they hear not Moses and 
the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead." 

Sanctify us, O Lord, through Thy Truth: 
Thy Word is Truth. Amen. 



Dearly Beloved in Christ: 

There are just four possibilities in this life and the life 
to come. A man may be rich in this world and rich in 
heaven. Such a man was Abraham. Then, again, a man 
may be rich in this world and poor in hell. Such a man 
was the rich man of our text. Then, again, a man may be 
a poor man in this world and rich in heaven. Such a man 

480 



FIRST SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. 481 

was the poor man that desired to eat the crumbs that fell 
from the rich man's table. And then, finally, a man may 
be a poor man in this world and a poor man in hell. And 
there you have the four possibilities. Do not imagine for a 
single moment that it is impossible for a man to have wealth 
and be saved. It is the man who makes his wealth his god 
that cannot be saved. On the other hand, do not imagine 
either that just because a man has wealth, that therefore 
he is going to be saved. This rich man was kingly, he wore 
the purple, and yet He who knows all history in this life 
and in the life to come declares that he is in a hell, where 
the gulf is fixed, and we all say, Poor rich man in hell. 
Again, we see this poor tramp, if we may so call him, but 
a child of God, lying sick and sore at the steps of this royal 
man. He had no funeral like the rich man — possibly he 
was even dragged away by the dogs that came to lick his 
sores — but this poor man possesses all that Abraham in 
heaven does — he is rich. Do not think for a single moment 
that this rich man was lost because he was rich, nor that 
the poor man was saved because he was poor. This same 
poor man might have died as poor as he lived, and gone to 
hell with the rich man. Do not think for a single moment 
because you are poor here that you are going to reach 
heaven, and do not think that because you are rich you are 
going to escape hell. I want to give you 

NINE REASONS WHY RICH AND POOR SHOULD BE SAVED. 

I. Three reasons in heaven, 
II. Three reasons in hell. 
III. Three reasons on earth. 

I. I shall go, first of all, to heaven, and get three reasons 
there. 

1. One of the first is, that we have the Word of God 
given to us from heaven, which is the most powerful testi- 
mony that any man on earth can ask for. This rich man 
in hell looked up and saw Abraham, and wanted him to 
send Lazarus to his own house, and tell his five brothers, 
that they might not come into that place of torment, but the 
answer goes back, "They have Moses and the prophets." 
4k Well," says this rich man, "I know they have Moses and 
31 



482 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

the prophets, but if some man can rise from the dead, and 
then go and tell them, they would all believe, and would 
not come to this place of torment." But Abraham cor- 
rectly answers, "They have Moses and the prophets, and if 
they will not believe these they would not believe one 
though he rose from the dead." It may seem to some of 
you that the argument of the rich man in hell was a good 
one; it may seem to some of you that if some man should 
really come back who had been in hell, and tell us all about 
it, that we would all repent and all become Christian. 
Suppose some man should come back from hell; suppose he 
had come last night and asked for the privilege of standing 
here and warning all of you to escape from the wrath to 
come, that he had been there, and that he had suffered 
torment, and that by special permission he came back to 
preach to you and give you all the warning to flee from the 
wrath to come, how many of you would believe that man? 
You would apply to the Probate Court to have him exam- 
ined and declared insane. You would not believe any man 
on earth, if he came from hell, or if he came from heaven. 
The real truth of it is, that if the Word of God will not con- 
vince a man, he will not be convinced. If the angels from 
heaven should take some men by the collar and shake 
them, and say, "We came from heaven," they would turn 
around, and look, and say, "Who told you so?" There is 
such an ungodly stubbornness in some people that they 
will never listen to anything. When we have here before 
us the testimony of sixty-six books, written within a period 
of fifteen hundred years, with one mind running through 
them, revealing things that no human mind can compre- 
hend, foretelling for a thousand years things that the 
world decided could not be, and were literally fulfilled, 
when a man will not believe the Inspired Word of God, he 
simply cannot and will not be convinced until he is in 
hell itself. This is one reason why every man should be 
saved, because the message of God is here, and it is here in 
this world in about four hundred languages, and every man 
has the right to know the mind of God. 

2. We have not only got the mind of God, but heaven 
gave us another reason. We read in this same chapter 






FIBST SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. 483 

that John the Baptist preached unto the world the Gospel, 
and the Gospel is the glad tidings that Jesus Christ is come 
into the world to save sinners, and through faith to make 
them forever blessed, and our Father in heaven gave His 
only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should 
not perish but have everlasting life; and Jesus Christ, the 
only begotten Son, laid down His life on Calvary. No man 
on earth will deny that, if he believes anything at all. If 
the fact that Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God, has come into 
this world and laid down His life for you is not a reason 
why you ought to be saved then there is no reason in 
heaven, nor on earth, nor in hell, why you should be saved. 

3. We have still another reason from heaven, and that 
is the communion that there exists between all the saints, 
rich or poor. This rich man in hell cried up to Abraham 
to have mercy on him, and send Lazarus down to his old 
home and tell his five brethren that they might not come to 
this place of torment Did Abraham send Lazarus? No. 
Did Lazarus say, I want to go? No. Did Abraham say, 
I will go down to Mansfield, there are a few people down 
there who ought to be saved, I will go and warn them? 
No. Did Lazarus say, I am sick of this heavenly place up 
here? No. Do you find up there that the poor were put 
over to one side, and the rich over to the other? No. The 
angels took this poor man, when the rich man would not, 
and picked him up, and carried him to Abraham's bosom, 
and from that moment they were bosom friends and they 
are to-day yet. Up there rich Abraham and poor Laza- 
rus are bosom friends, and they are not coming back to 
this sinful world, but they have a testimony up there that 
every man on earth ought to be saved. 

II. We have not only three reasons in heaven, but we 
have three reasons in hell. 

1. The first one I find is a testimony that cannot be 
denied, and the first witness I call up will be the greatest 
witness there ever was in hell — that is the rich man himself. 
Men say, If I were sure there was a hell, I would be a Chris- 
tion. My dear friends, I am not a Christian because there is, 
or is not, a hell. The man who only flees to Christ because he 
is afraid of hell is no Christian. I want to say right here 



484 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

that one thing is sure, if there is no hell there is no heaven. 
We have the greatest Witness before us to-day that ever 
spoke on earth, and this One is none other than Jesus 
Christ Himself. Jesus Christ is the most wonderful His- 
torian that ever walked upon God's earth. The reason 
men are poor historians is because they cannot look into 
the hearts of men, and consequently do not understand 
history; another reason why they cannot write history per- 
fectly is because they cannot look beyond this life; but we 
have before us here a perfect Historian, who can look into 
the hearts of men, who can tell the innermost thoughts, 
w T ho can look beyond death and who can look beyond the 
grave, who can look into heaven and look into hell, and 
we have his testimony to-day to the great fact that every 
man ought to be saved. Some one may ask the question, 
Is this a parable, or history? In the first place, I will tell 
you it is not a parable. The reason of it is that in a par- 
able we always have a something declared that is earthly 
and plain, to a people, without proper names, to make plain 
something heavenly, which otherwise could not be under- 
stood. This is no parable, for He does not say, Heaven is 
like so and so, and that hell is like so and so, but that 
there was a certain rich man, and his name is not men- 
tioned, but he tells us of two men in heaven, and their 
names are mentioned, Lazarus and Abraham. You can- 
not find a single parable in the Bible with proper names 
in it. But what is the difference whether it is history or 
a parable? If it is history, then Abraham and Lazarus 
are in heaven, and this rich man is in hell. If a parable, 
then, my dear friends, there is a place called heaven, and 
every Christian will go to that place, and they will find 
there Lazarus and Abraham; if it is a parable, there is a 
place which is called hell, and it is intended for you and 
for me if we do not accept the Lord Jesus Christ. No dif- 
ference, then, whether it is a parable, or no parable, the 
result is all the same; in the one case those men are there; 
in the other case, it is an illustration of where you and I 
will go, in case we do one thing or the other, so what is the 
difference? I say there is nothing more established on 
God's earth, than the fact that there is a heaven and a 



FIRST SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. 485 

hell. We have the testimony of Jesus Christ, who is the 
Way, the Truth, and the Life, and no man cometh to the 
Father but by Him; we have the testimony of Abraham, 
and a greater man never walked on God's earth, and I 
would believe Abraham as quickly as I would believe 
George Washington; we have the testimony of Luke, the 
physician, as good a witness as Jesus Christ had on earth. 
We have not only the testimony of Luke, and of Abraham ; 
we have the testimony of the rich man in hell himself. I 
should think he ought to know. And not only have we his 
testimony, but we have the testimony of the Holy Spirit. 
"Holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy 
Ghost." How did it happen that this little history went 
down in the sixteenth chapter of Luke? How does it come 
that the same Holy Spirit that gave us the Bible, gave us 
this chapter, and this part of the chapter? We have the 
testimony of that Holy Spirit that there is a heaven, that 
there is a hell, and that one of these places is the eternal 
destination of every man. If that is not a strong reason 
why every man should be saved, I do not know what 
reason is. 

2. We have not only that testimony which is strong, 
but we have the very torment of hell described, which ought 
to wake up every man. "And he cried, and said, Father 
Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus that he 
may dip the tip of his finger in water, and cool my tongue, 
for I am tormented in this flame." Then he said, "I pray 
thee, therefore, father, that thou wouldst send him to my 
father's house, for I have five brethren, that he may testify 
unto them, lest they also come into this place of torment." 
It does seem to me that when we see this same man, who 
at one time did not think enough of poor Lazarus to pick 
up the crumbs upon which his feet were standing, to give 
them to the poor man to save his life; it does seem to me 
now, when that tongue that used to quaff the wine is want- 
ing a drop to cool it; when that man that one time was not 
willing to give the crumb, now asks for the little drop of 
water to ease the torment of a single little member of his 
great body, it ought to teach us that there is a torment, 
call it what you please, in eternity, for the man who has 



486 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

rejected Jesus Christ, the only Savior. If I were to take 
you to-morrow morning to one of our own members that 
right now is suffering with that awful disease — cancer — 
gnawing day and night at her breast; if I could take you to 
that home, and then give you the dreadful warning that 
unless you start around the world in thirty days this same 
cancer will be in your breast, if it were possible, before the 
thirty days are up you would start around the world, if 
you had to walk; and yet, when we have the testimony in 
hell of a man whose very tongue is crying for mercy, and 
crying for a drop of water to cool it; and when we have the 
testimony of the Lord Jesus Christ, who never lies and 
cannot lie, you are living on as if God were a liar, you are 
living on-with your soul lost, you are living on, a candidate 
for hell, and will not turn to your only Savior, Jesus Christ, 
and I say, my dear friends, that a man who will not repent, 
after hearing the truths I am preaching and become a 
Christian, will never become one. There is the same Spirit 
here that cried out in the past, "Awake and flee from the 
wrath to come!" 

3. We have not only the testimony of hell, the testi- 
mony that cannot be disputed, but we have a testimony 
that comes from there from helpless missionaries. If I 
were to say to you that I want you now, not only to become 
Christian but to go and preach the Gospel, "Oh," you 
would say, "I cannot do that, it is out of the question." 
If any man had said to this rich man, or king, with his 
purple robe, "You had better go and become a missionary 
to the heathen," he would have said, "What do I need to 
go to the heathen for? I have a poor man lying right at 
my steps, and all I care is for the dogs to come and drag 
him away." Oh, he had no time to go to church; oh, no. 
He had no time to read the Bible — oh, no; he had no time 
to go to Sunday-school — oh, no ; he had no time to sing a 
song of praise, or offer a prayer — oh, no ; he had no time to 
keep Sunday — oh, no. He fared sumptuously every day. 
No time for anything, and one day he found out that he 
had to die, and, my dear Christian friends, when it comes 
to death you are all going to die just as this man did in 
one respect, as you believe you live, and as you live you 



FIRST SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. 487 

die, and as you die you will pass into eternity, and where 
you go you will stay. That is God's Word. This man died, 
and he went to a place where the gulf was fixed. He did 
not say to Abraham, Come and unlock this door, and let me 
go home; he did not say, "O God, help me;" he never 
prayed while he lived, and he could not pray in hell, but 
he called to Abraham, and said, "Oh, do send Lazarus to 
tell my five brothers that they shall not come into this 
place of torment." In other words, "I would like to be a 
missionary now." He never gave a cent for missions while 
he lived; he never cared for the church while he lived; but 
in hell, oh, how gladly he would have gone into the home 
of a man of God; how gladly he would have gone to his 
brethren, and said, Do not live as I did; don't come here, 
where I am; don't come here, because if you were to come 
here I would remember that I was the means of bringing 
you here, and my tongue would burn a thousand times 
more than it does. Go and tell them not to come into this 
place of torment. I am a helpless missionary. Yes, my 
dear friends, you are going to be missionaries some time. 
If you will not be a child of God in this world, if you will 
not be a missionary in this life, when you are in hell you 
would like to be one, and cannot. These are not theories 
that I am giving you, it is God's eternal truth. 

III. What are the three reasons we have on earth? 

1. I would tell you, first, that we have the combined 
reasons of heaven here on earth. The Word of God was 
given by the Lord our God, but let us not forget that He 
brought it down on earth. They tell us that possibly the 
moon is inhabited, but no man on earth knows whether 
there are people there or not; they tell us that some of 
those other worlds may be inhabited, but no angel ever 
revealed to us that there are people anywhere but here on 
earth. So you have the W T ord of God here on earth, and 
that is the reason you have the Lord Jesus Christ on earth. 
It was not on some distant world that He died; it was over 
here in the Holy Land, where these young men and women, 
who went to Jerusalem a few weeks ago, sat down at the 
place where Jesus preached those heavenly lessons. 



488 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

You have not only that reason, but you have the very 
reasons of those that were up there. Abraham was not 
some man born beyond the stars; he was brought up down 
at Ur; he walked over the Holy Land, and touched this 
earth. Lazarus was not a fictitious name. He was a man 
who lived and died on the sanle earth where you and I live. 
And now you have the combined reasons of heaven, all on 
earth, to tell you to prepare to meet your God. 

2. We have also the combined reasons of hell. This 
rich man was a man whom some people knew in the Holy 
Land. This rich man at one time walked on earth, and 
while it is a fact that Abraham did not send Lazarus to 
bring the news to the five brethren, yet I believe that those 
five brethren got the message. I am told here that Jesus 
Christ uttered this great truth, and I am satisfied that 
those five men were living on the very day that Jesus 
Christ uttered this truth, and, while an angel did not bring 
the message, and while Lazarus did not bring it, the Lord 
Jesus Christ did bring it, and He brought the message from 
hell on earth that those five brothers might still hear that 
they should not go where their brother did. I sometimes 
meet men that are boasting infidels and boasting unbelievers, 
and when I tell them to prepare to meet their God they 
tell me that their fathers died infidels, and their old rela- 
tives died infidels, and that they will run the same risk 
their parents did. My dear friend, if your father died and 
went to hell, he is the last man that wants to see you there. 
If he could, depend upon it, he would send the message, My 
boy, don't live as I did, and don't die as I did. He don't 
want you there. 

3. We have not only all the testimony of hell and the 
testimony of heaven, but we have these all combined here 
on earth; and oh, what a message these two combined mes- 
sages make to man. We have in this lesson to-night the 
great fact that an unsaved man is a bad man. It is com- 
monly reported of some men that they are no Christians, 
but good men. Is that true? Can it be true? If a man 
will not accept the Lord Jesus Christ, why does he not do 
it? He does not do it because he trusts in himself, and oh, 



FIRST SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. 489 

what a piece of selfishness a poor sinner must be, who 
trusts in himself! Is that a good man? And if he trusts 
in himself, he rejects the Savior. Is that a good man? 
And if he trusts in himself and rejects the Savior, he rejects 
the Father in heaven. Is that a good man? How about 
his influence? Is that man a good man that is saying by 
his very life, "Everybody follow me." You may think that 
people will not follow you, but there is no man so low on 
earth that some other man will not follow him. Not one. 
What shall we say of a father in a home who lives an un- 
godly life, and by that life says, "Wife, live as I do," and 
"Children, go with me." Oh, what an influence for evil! 
What a bad man this rich man was that time, dressed in 
purple, honored as a king, everyone pointed at him, and 
said, "Look at that rich man in purple; we will follow him; 
we will never follow a poor tramp, lying down here at the 
steps." The consequence was that when the rich man 
went to hell he felt the result of that influence, and oh, how 
he longed to go back and tell of his awful mistake and bis 
awful end. Just think of it! Think of a man created by 
the Lord God, in the image of the Father, living on God's 
earth for thirty, sixty, and possibly eighty years, hearing 
the glorious news how to be saved and rejecting it all the 
time, and at last perishing forever — awful end! bad man! 
lost man! 

Not only a bad man, but a lost man, is the only object 
to be saved in all the universe. If you could go from star 
to star, you could not find another thing to be saved but 
man. You may go all over this earth and you cannot find 
a single thing that does not do its God-given duty but man. 
The ground never refuses to be ground; the trees do not 
grow with their trunks downward, but upward; the water 
flows according to God's own course; only rebellious man 
will fight the eternal God. 

He is not only a bad man, and he is not only the only 
object of salvation, but the truth of it is his eternal destiny 
will soon be prepared. We have a great many people in 
the present day especially, who are filled with that ungodly 
doctrine, with that Satanic doctrine, that, no difference 
how you live and die, there will be a chance given after 



490 



THE GREAT GOSPEL. 



death. You will find it not only among those outside of 
the Church, but it is in the heads of some ministers, and it 
is in the heads of some of the people, that, no difference 
who dies, they will go up into some great, grand lodge 
above, whether God says so or not. That is the kind of 
doctrine that is keeping people out of the churches, rob- 
bing the ministry of its power; it is that kind of belief that 
is keeping souls out of heaven and driving them to hell. 
The real truth of it is that this rich man in hell could not 
get out because the gulf was fixed. The real truth of it is 
that Abraham and Lazarus could not go where the rich 
man was, and the rich man could not go where they were. 
And so I would call your attention this day to the great 
fact that, no difference with how much pomp you are 
buried, that will not take you to heaven. Once in a while 
you see people parading the streets, and blowing their cor- 
nets, and playing the band, as if the man who is now dead 
must surely go right to heaven. Did you notice while 
reading this chapter and text, that this rich man had a 
funeral and was buried? You may make up your mind that 
he who died with purple on his back had no ordinary fune- 
ral; you can make up your mind that in those days they 
gave him all the honor that could be given to man; you can 
make up your mind that some preacher was there who 
would pronounce his soul in heaven for two dollars and a 
half; but I tell you, my friends, there is no ministry that is 
false, and there is no pomp of funeral and no parade that 
can take a lost man to heaven. On the other hand, there 
is no neglect and no poverty that can drag a poor man, a 
child of God, down to hell. You may think this royal man 
had a wonderful funeral. But oh, give me the funeral of 
poor Lazarus, who lay there at the steps of the rich man, 
with boils and sores all over his body, with no friends but 
the dogs that came to lick his sores. Did I say no friends? 
He had better friends than the rich man had. We are told 
here that the angels came and picked him up and carried 
him to Abraham's bosom. That is the kind of funeral I 
want, and that is the kind of funeral I want you to have, 
that when your last hour comes, and the angel of death 
begins to sweep over your feet, and over your heart, and 



FIRST SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. 491 

says, "Be still;" and over your lips, and says, "Be silent," 
and over your glazed eyes, and when you look beyond the 
other side of the veil you can hear the sweep of angels' 
wings as they go heavenward — you will be with Jesus 
Christ, your Redeemer — saved, because He accepted you 
and you accepted Him. 

I would like to bring these nine reasons to-day, three 
from heaven and three from hell, and combine them on 
earth, and say to you who are not children of God yet: 
repent of your sins, believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and 
be baptized in His name; and then, when you yourself have 
accepted Jesus, and have put on Christ by Holy Baptism, 
bring your children to the Savior, as the promise is to you 
and your children; bring them into the Church of God, and 
keep them there, and help them that they may live and die 
as children of God. And when you are Christian, and your 
children are Christian, bring the servants in, and do not 
allow a servant to live in your home for a whole year with- 
out being a child of God. And when the servants are 
brought in, go after the neighbors and bring them in, and 
when the neighbors are children of God send them out, and 
you go out, from city to city, from county to county, from 
state to state, from nation to nation, until the whole world 
shall hear of Jesus, the only Savior, who lived and died, 
that we might live forever. "He that believeth and is bap- 
tized shall be saved/' are the words of Him who gave us 
the text of the morning. Amen. 

PRAYER. 

We ask Thy divine blessing, O Heavenly Father, upon this great mes- 
sage — great, not because of man, but it is great because it is the voice of 
Him who is the Truth. O Father in Heaven, impress this truth upon our 
hearts ; help that this message may wake up every one to enter into that 
kingdom, and have Thy kingdom enter into us. We pray Thee, O God, 
that Thou wilt help us not to get away from this message. Though sleep 
is pleasure, if we are not saved let us have not sleep until we shall be 
ready to fall asleep in Jesus. We pray Thee to continue Thy blessing upon 
this church ; we ask Thy special blessing upon all those who this day have 
brought precious gifts to Thee ; and we ask Thy blessing upon those who 
this night shall bring more gifts to Thee; and we pray Thee, O God, that 
the good work may go on, all for Thy kingdom here on earth. Heavenly 



492 , THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

Father, do Thou now listen to that beautiful prayer, and help us to pray it 
with Thy Spirit, .the prayer which Thou hast taught us : 

Our Father, who art in heaven: Hallowed by Thy name; Thy kingdom 
come ; Thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven. Give us, this day, our 
daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass 
against us. Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For Thine 
is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever and ever. Amen. 






SECOND SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY, 



DIVINE ENTHUSIASM. 



Luke 14: 16-24. 



ii^P^f HEN said He unto Him, a certain man made a great- supper, and 
bade many ; and sent his servant at supper time to say to 
them that were bidden, Come, for all things are now ready. 
And they all with one consent began to make excuse. The first said unto 
him, I have bought a piece of ground, and I must needs go and see it ; I 
pray thee, have me excused. And another said, I have bought five yoke of 
oxen, and I go to prove them ; I pray thee, have me excused. And another 
said, I have married a wife, and therefore I cannot come. So that servant 
came, and showed his lord these things. Then the master of the house, 
being angry, said to his servant, Go out quickly into the streets and lanes 
of the city, and bring in hither the poor, and the maimed, and the halt, and 
the blind. And the servant said, Lord it is done as thou hast commanded, 
and yet there is room. And the lord said unto the servant, Go out into the 
highways and hedges, and compel them to come in, that my house may be 
filled. For I say unto you, that none of those men which were bidden 
shall taste of my supper." 

Sanctify us, O Lord, through Thy Truth : 
Thy Word is Truth. Amen. 



Dear Christian Friends : — 

We are now enjoying that season of the Church-year 
called Trinity, and it is a notable fact that the text just read 
has no fewer than six trinities in it. First of all, we have 
the Triune God. We have a parable here of a man who made 
a great supper and bade many. It is not hard to understand 
that this man represents God Himself, who prepared a great 
supper for all His people, when He promised the Lamb of 
God to take away the sins of the world, and that Lamb came, 
and laid down His life for us, and then promised the Com- 
forter, and the Comforter came, and the ministry was sent 
out into all the world to tell the people that now this supper 

493 



494 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

is ready, — in other words, that God has done everything 
that can be done on the part of Himself to save the world. 
So we find in this very parable God the Father preparing a 
supper, Jesus Christ Himself being the Lamb, and the Holy 
Spirit giving the invitation. 

We have here not only a picture of the trinity of the 
Triune God, but we have three separate invitations. You 
will notice the first invitation was sent to them that were 
bidden, namely, to those who were nominal Christians; the 
second was sent to those who were out in the streets and 
lanes, and the third was sent out to those along the highways 
and hedges. In other words, the first invitation was "Come," 
the second was "Bring," and the third was "Compel them to 
come in." 

We have not only a trinity of invitations, but we have 
three different classes invited. I have already hinted at 
these classes, when I told you .that the first were nominal 
Christians. The Lord Jesus Christ had just been invited to 
a great supper, where the object was to catch Him in some- 
thing that He said or did. It was at that supper that He 
showed them the folly of trying to take an upper seat and 
then be put down, but rather said that they should take a 
lower seat, and then have the privilege of being ordered to go 
up higher. When speaking in this connection it was that one 
of them cried out, "Blessed is he that shall eat bread in the 
kingdom of God," and in answer to what this man said, the 
Lord Jesus Christ shows how these Pharisees and scribes and 
priests were nominal members of the Church, and had long 
ago been invited; nevertheless, now that the pure Gospel 
was already prepared, they should have another invitation 
So there you have the first class. The second class were 
those w T ho are still in the city, but do not come to the house of 
God any more. You will find them standing on the streets ; 
you will find them in the alleys; you will find them within 
the corporation, but they do not come and praise God as they 
should, nor hear His glorious name proclaimed. He sent 
out invitations to those, but is not satisfied that any one 
should not have this invitation. The last invitations went 
out ; He said, Go down to the highways, beyond the corpor- 
ation, go out to the hedges, beyond our confines, go out into 



SECOND SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. 495 

all the world, and bring them all in, for my house is not yet 
full, there is still room. 

We have not only a trinity of invitations, and classes, 
but we have also a trinity of excuses. The first one gave the 
excuse that he had bought a farm, and therefore could not 
come; in other words, his excuse was that his heart was on 
the earth. The second one did not look so much to the earth 
as he looked to those things that were produced on the earth, 
and made subjects of merchandise ; he had bought five yoke 
of oxen, and, though invited to come to the great supper, 
he must go and prove them, consequently he wants to be 
excused. A third invitation goes out to another class, and 
this one says, I cannot come because I have just taken 
a wife. So you see there are three different kinds of ex- 
cuses. Oh, how many young people are faithful to the 
Church of God until they are married, and where are they 
after that? How many young people are faithful to their 
God until they establish a home, and then forget all about 
God ! How many people there are who think more of an ox 
than they do of the Church of God ! How many people there 
are who w T ould not come to the house of God if they could go 
and look at another farm to buy on Sunday! 

So we have not only three different classes of excuses, but 
we have also another trinity, and that is, three degrees of 
excuses. You will notice that the first excuse was very gen- 
tlemanly; the man said, "I must go and see the farm, and 
therefore I pray thee have me excused." What are you 
going to do with a man when he must go? So it was, at 
least, polite. The second excuse was not so polite. He did 
not say, "I must go and see these oxen/' but, "I am just 
going," and was polite enough to say, "I pray thee, have me 
excused." — down just a notch lower than the first. Then 
comes the unmanly third one, and says, "I have taken a 
wife" — he did not say, "I had to take her" — he did not say, 
"I must" — he did not say, "I pray thee have me excused," 
nothing of the kind — "I do not ask for an excuse, I do not 
have to, I am not coming." 

We have not only three degrees of excuses that go the 
downward grade, but we have also in this lesson another 
trinity of enthusiasm that rises higher and higher. When 



496 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

the great supper was ready the invitation went out to those 
bidden before, "Come," there was enough enthusiasm in 
that call to bring them all, but not one of them came ; nearly 
every one had an excuse. So the next time this invitation 
rises just a little higher. He does not say to the servant the 
second time, "Go out and tell them to come," but, "Go into 
the lanes, and into the streets, and bring them in." The 
servant goes out and brings them in, but there are still many, 
and the servant hears the great announcement "There is yet 
room in my house ; go out into the highways and hedges, and 
now take them, and do not let them stay back for any consid- 
eration — Compel them to come in." You will notice the 
higher grade of enthusiasm. I call your attention this morn- 
ing to 

DIVINE ENTHUSIASM. 

I. Its principle. 
II. Its poiver. 

I. We will notice its principle. The principle of Di- 
vine Enthusiasm is Scriptural, and safe. 

1. It is Scriptural. God is full of enthusiasm. Let me 
take you this morning back to the hills of Midian ; watch the 
shepherd as he goes up yonder hill, and all at once is sur- 
prised to find a burning bush ; not so much surprised to find 
it burning, as the fact that it will not consume, and he hears 
a voice — "Take off thy shoes ; this is holy ground." Whose 
voice was it? God's voice, calling to Moses. What does 
that fire represent? The enthusiasm of God — always burn- 
ing and never consumed. Go with me to the top of yonder 
hill, notice please, the lightning's flash, and hear the thunder 
roll. It is the voice of God, who is giving Moses the Divine 
law, a part of which is, "I am a jealous God, visiting 
the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third 
and fourth generation of them that hate Me, and showing 
mercy unto thousands of them that love Me and keep My 
commandments." These words, referring to all the com- 
mandments are full of fire, as the clouds and the skies are 
full of electricity — the enthusiasm of God. Go with me to 
Mount Carmel, where for one whole day the ungodly priests 
are calling upon Baal to burn up the sacrifice. Come with me 



SECOND SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. 497 

in the evening hour when the only man of God, Elijah, calls 
upon the true and living God, tilled with enthusiasm, to burn 
the sacrifice, and the fiery flames leaped to the very heavens 
— a picture of divine enthusiasm in the very heart of God. 
Go with me to that mountain when Jesus Christ Himself 
preaches that wonderful sermon, full of fire. Go with me 
to that sermon that He preaches finally to the Pharisees, 
when He says, "Woe, woe, woe, unto you scribes, Pharisees, 
hypocrites!" The enthusiasm of God can be seen on the 
day of Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit, like fiery tongues, 
sat on the disciples. 

And that fire is not only in God, but that fire God puts 
into the hearts of men; and not only into the hearts of in- 
spired men, but also into the hearts of uninspired men. What 
was it that gave one man the patience for thirteen long years, 
to meet one defeat after the other, before the cable was laid 
across the Atlantic? What was it that put it into the heart 
of Alexander he Great, just in time, to spread the Greek lan- 
guage over the world, in which the Gospel of Christ was to 
be preached? What was it that put it into the heart of 
that great electrician of our own country, to work day and 
night, until his fiery horse is galloping over the world? What 
was it that put it into the heart of Thomas Scott, at the age 
of eighty-six to study the old Hebrew language, that he 
might understand the message of old? What was it that put 
it into the heart of Humboldt, at the age of ninety years, to 
write his "Cosmos?" What was it that kindled the heart of 
Melanchthon, at the age of twenty-three to hold the Greek 
chair in Wittenberg University? What Avas it that made 
Luther, the young man, such a great reformer? What was 
it that started a young Spurgeon to set the world on fire? 
What was it that made such a man as Wesley kindle a fire 
that burns a thousand times higher than the great church 
that bears his name? Go back into the Bible, and you will 
find the answer to my questions. God not only rules Chris- 
tians ; He rules the universe. "In Him we live, and move, 
and have our being," whether we are children of God, or an 
Alexander the Great. In Him we live, and move and have 
our being, whether we are the apostle Paul, or some scien- 
tist. Do not imagine for a single moment that all the great 
32 



498 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

movements in the world to-day are human. God is back of 
them. 

And that same enthusiasm that God put into the hearts 
even of worldly men, He puts with a double fire into the 
hearts of His children. — Moses, the stuttering man, at the 
head of six thousand soldiers, marching out of Egypt, a 
burning fire himself, filled with God's enthusiasm ; — Elijah, 
not afraid of eight hundred and fifty false preachers on 
Mount Carmel, his own heart a part of the flame that after- 
wards takes him in the chariot to heaven ; — Paul, with that 
enthusiasm in his heart, willing to be accursed, that Israel 
might be saved ; — Luther, with that flame in his heart, ready 
to die, that Germany, and Europe, and the world might have 
liberty. 

2. My dear friends, I call your attention again to the 
fact that divine enthusiasm is safe. It is opposed to all 
fanaticism; it is opposed to all dead orthodoxy. 

There is an enthusiasm that is dangerous. It is the en- 
thusiasm of people when they run away from God's order ; it 
is the enthusiasm that you sometimes find among the col- 
ored people, who, instead of sitting down and worshiping 
God as they ought to, roll on the floor and leap over seats, 
instead of giving a true service to God ; it is the false enthus- 
iasm that is sometimes found among people who think they 
are converted, when they are perverted; it is the false en- 
thusiasm of people who seem to think that they need not ask 
at all what God says about this or that, but devise human 
plans to take the place of God's plans. That kind of enthus- 
iasm is dangerous. That is the kind of enthusiasm that has 
led men to take their own lives — they thought they lost a 
religion that they never had. It does not take very much 
magnetism, and it does not take very much knowledge of the 
higher spheres of oratory, to stir up some people to high ex- 
citement, but oh ! that is far from divine enthusiasm. It has 
been noticed in the past few years especially, that many 
churches and conventions imagine they are getting up some- 
thing new and something wonderful, when the real truth of 
it is, it is nothing but good old Lutheran custom. A few 
years ago a church that had no special power thought what 
a great thing it was giving to the world when it asked young 



SECOND SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. 499 

people to take a pledge, yet for three hundred years the Luth- 
eran church has had a better pledge, and they are coming 
back to it. At the late State Sunday-school Convention, the 
largest ever held in this State, at Lima, there were some very 
good things presented, but I was told by one who was pres- 
ent, and one who understands things, that every good thing 
that was presented as new, is old in the Lutheran Church. 
The real truth of it is, then, that there is an enthusiasm that 
is false. Divine enthusiasm is always safe; it goes right 
hand in hand with God Almighty. 

It is not only safe, in opposing fanaticism, but it is also 
safe in opposing dead orthodoxy. Why is it that some 
churches have felt like breaking away from old customs? I 
will tell you why. I know of some good old churches that 
had some old truths in them, that never tried to save a single 
soul outside of their own families ; I know of churches that 
boast of having the truth, and the members cared not one 
whit who saw them go into the saloons and come out intoxi- 
cated ; I know of churches that claim the good old truth, that 
the members do not think it very much wrong to curse and 
swear, if things do not go right, and is it any wonder that 
some people, who love the truth, and love true righteousness, 
and love true Christianity, get disgusted with that kind of 
life, and will break away and go too far the other way? A 
divine enthusiasm will not go into human fanaticism on the 
one hand, and it will not walk hand in hand with a dead or- 
thodoxy on the other. True and divine enthusiasm will go 
into God's Word, and get filled with the holy law, until sin 
stands like mountains before it, and cry for mercy and get 
forgiveness, and find peace in the Lord Jesus Christ, and 
want everybody else to have that peace, and is willing to die, 
as the Master died, for the salvation of the world — and that 
is, safe. 

II. Divine enthusiasm is not only Scriptural and safe 
in principle, but I want to call your attention to the fact 
that it is always powerful ; it knows no defeat; and it always 
wins the victory. 

1. It knows no defeat, by forces withdrawn or opposed. 
When the invitation was sent out, you will notice that the 
very people that should have come to the supper, absolutely 



500 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

refused to come. The first one could not come, because he 
had bought some land ; the second one could not come because 
he was in business; and the third one could not come be- 
cause of domestic affairs — not one of them came. Did the 
Lord God go then and say, "Now it is all done, the supper 
is prepared, and we will just have to drop it; we cannot go 
any further?" Oh, no. He said, "These people are trying 
to oppose me by withdrawing their power," but a divine en- 
thusiasm never will die because power is withdrawn. How 
often Ave find in the present day that people think, If I with- 
draw my power, then this thing will not go. Divine enthu- 
siasm never depends upon any man, nor on men. There is 
not a great discovery in the world that has not had its with- 
drawing, and its opposing forces. There never was a man 
that did any great good for the world that did not find that 
those that should have stood by him, drew back. I could 
mention a man on our own street about ten days ago that 
said, "Henceforth I will withdraw all my support from the 
First Lutheran Church," and I looked over his record and 
saw that in the past ten years he has given about ninety-five 
cents. That is the kind of men that withdraw their force. 
The result was that we had twenty-one hundred dollars last 
Sunday to enter against his ninety-five cents. Let us not 
imagine for a single moment that we are so important that 
the Lord God cannot get along without us. Whenever I get 
into my heart, and into my head, the notion that I am the 
only preacher in the world, the sooner the Lord takes me out, 
the better; and whenever any of you think that you are so 
important that your withdrawal from a great work in God's 
name is going to do any harm, the sooner you will learn that 
God will treat you just as he treated this first class — He 
never paid any more attention, except to say that "none of 
those bidden shall taste of My supper." That is the way to 
handle these people. 

Divine enthusiasm can get along without you, and it can 
get along without me ; divine enthusiasm can get along with- 
out anybody in the world. It is right, and it goes on in the 
name of God, and gets strength, not only by having force 
withdrawn, but by opposing the opposing force. A man 
might stand on the top of a mountain and roll five hundred 



SECOND SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. 501 

rocks down, ami his muscles wouldn't be any stronger when 
he quit than when he started; but if he would go into the 
valley and roll half of those rocks up to the top of the moun- 
tain, he would have muscle. The way to get muscle is to 
have something to fight for; the way to get strength is to 
exercise your powers. Divine force has always grown by op- 
posing the opposing force. What made the Reformation 
grow? It was the fact that seven great hills down at Rome 
were fighting it. What is it that has made Japan the won- 
derful nation it is to-day? The fact that they have been 
depressed by a great empire that thought it would crush 
Japan in a few weeks. There is nothing that made our own 
nation so strong, as the fact that it laid down the blood and 
the lives of four hundred thousand men for our liberty, and 
for our future glory and success, and there is nothing that 
will make the Church of God prosper like opposition, if that 
opposition comes with a determination to crush. And so, 
I would say again, Divine enthusiasm is powerful, for it 
knows no defeat. 

2. It always wins the victory. There is nothing in 
this world so dumb and so blind as infidelity. Did you ever 
notice that when one is an infidel, he thinks he is doing some- 
thing smart, and at the same time is doing the most stupid 
thing he could even imagine? Just so with all opposition, 
wherever it may be, to the progress of God's holy Church. We 
find the Savior wants, in this great parable, to teach us that 
He sends this same messenger out, and leaves those that were 
nominal Christians, to one side; He sends the messenger 
out into the lanes, and streets, and brings in the poor, the 
maimed, the halt, and the blind, and He fills the Church. 
And not only does He fill the Church, but He sends out into 
the highways and hedges, and compels them to come in, that 
His house may be filled, and that heaven may be filled. 

Did you ever stop to think that it is divine enthusiasm, 
after all, that is going to fill the Church, and fill heaven? 
You can take me down here to one of our factories, and show 
me the finest machine that can be made ; and you may take 
me to the Aultman Company and show me a threshing ma- 
chine, when finished, every wheel in its place, every gearing 
in order, but I want to tell you, my friends, unless that ma- 



502 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

chine is connected with the engine, and unless the engine 
has got some fire and steam, you will never thresh. There 
are some people who are wonderfully intelligent; their 
powers of discernment are great; their intellectual powers 
are remarkable; there are fathers and mothers who have 
spent fortunes to educate them, and, with all their knowl- 
edge, and with all their learning, they sit down and accom- 
plish nothing, and break the hearts of their parents. What 
is the matter? No fire in them — no enthusiasm in them. 
Everything that has ever made progress in the world, has 
been filled with divine enthusiasm, and it is that that fills 
the Church; it is that that fills heaven; it is that that fills 
the pulpit. Men sometimes say they fill the pulpit when 
they stand up and read some old, dry essay, but you cannot 
fill the pulpit with essays; men sometimes think they. fill the 
pulpit when they call attention to their own remarkable acts, 
instead of to Christ and Him crucified. You cannot fill 
pulpits in that way. Is it any wonder that churches are 
empty? Is it any wonder that so many pews are vacant? 
You show me a man of God who is truly humble; who is 
filled with fire from on high ; show me a man of God who is 
living for absolutely no other purpose than to win souls for 
Jesus Christ, and let that man deliver a message, no differ- 
ence whether he be naturally eloquent or not, that message 
will bring souls, and those souls will bring others, and those 
others will bring others, and God's house will be filled. On 
a cold winter's day I can drive you out of my house by letting 
the fires go out, and when the fires go out in my heart and 
soul, when my life is no more totally for Jesus Christ and 
Him crucified, the church will be empty. It is divine en- 
thusiasm that brought in these souls. 

Oh! my dear friends, how many people there are in the 
city of Mansfield that are still out in the lanes; how many 
there are that are still out in the streets; how many there 
are that at one time were brought to the Lord God by godly 
parents, but they have wandered away ; they lost that great 
love that they once had for Jesus. Oh, God says, Go after 
them once more ; go out after them and bring them back. If 
these old Church members want to go, let them go, they know 
better; they have had the invitation ; they know what they 



SECOND SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. 503 

are doing when they run away ; spend no time, says God, on 
these ungodly people; let them go; but go out into the 
streets and get these poor lame people; these poor wounded 
people; these poor blind people, that cannot find the way 
back; go after them and fill My house. And this servant 
went out and brought them in. I tell you they are more 
willing than we give them credit for. There are people out 
of the Church of God to-day that would be here if we would 
simply go after them as we ought. There is still room. It 
seems to me I can hear God from heaven calling out this 
morning, "Still there is room ;" and in every church the cry 
goes out, "Still there is room!" Go out in the highways and 
hedges. Go out to the poor heathen that never heard of the 
Bible, that never heard of the Church and never heard of the 
love of Jesus Christ, that know nothing about the Resur- 
rection, and know nothing about the Judgment. Go out to 
them, and oh, take hold of them, and never come back until 
you have got them. Compel them to come in! I wish we 
all understood that compulsory call. God does not want 
these souls lost, He wants them brought in. There is one 
thing the Church is overlooking, and that is the element of 
Christian compulsion. No wonder that such a man as Hillis 
has lifted his voice against the Sunday-school, which has 
children that do not go to church. How he scored the mem- 
bers of old Plymouth last Sunday for allowing their children 
to stay out of divine service. And what are you parents 
doing? What does it mean to see boys and girls walking 
out of the Sunday-school and going home? My friends, I 
would not allow my children to do that; and I claim, fur- 
thermore, that if you understood the Word of God, you would 
not allow it. What does the word "compel" mean? Is it 
true that little children know better than you do, where they 
should go? Is it true that the commandment has been 
changed now, Parents honor your children, or is it, Children, 
honor your father and your mother? If I have the name of 
father, and am worthy of being a father, I will say to my boy, 
You come with me to the house of God ; if you have the name 
of mother, and are worthy of being a mother, you will say to 
your children, Come and sit down in the house of God. You 
say they do not understand. Going to church is more than 



504 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

simply understanding; it is a training. "Train up a child 
in the way he shall go, and when he is old he will not depart 
from it." But you are mistaken when you say they do not 
understand. I dare say that half of these children can go 
home to-day and tell as much of this sermon as you can; but 
even if they cannot understand everything, I say it is your 
duty, nevertheless, to train your children to sit down in God's 
house every Sunday, and let nothing but sickness or death 
keep them out. Will you have trouble to do so? No. No, 
a thousand times, no! There is not a parent on God's earth 
that tried it, that failed. If I had a family of twenty chil- 
dren, I tell you without boasting, I would have them all in 
church; there wouldn't be any question about it. Fathers 
and mothers, serve your God, and go to a little trouble, and 
bring your children into the house of God, and when you are 
old, you will get rid of those big troubles that are coming, if 
you do not train your children rightly. There are over 
seven hundred over here in yonder Reformatory that will 
tell you the story, they did not have to go to church. When 
one of them was asked the other day whether he had ever 
gone to church, he said "Once." "Why didn't you go after 
that? 1 ' "Because they arrested me after I went the first 
time." He stole in the church. It is the only time he ever 
saw the inside of a church. How are you going to train 
your children? How are you going to train your servants? 
When I see people going to church, and have the servant 
stand outside and hold the horses, I would not give the snap 
of my finger for that kind of religion. Compel them to 
come in. Compel your children to go to the house of God. 
Compel them to learn the Ten Commandments ; compel them 
to learn the Apostles' Creed; compel them to learn the 
Lord's Prayer; compel them to learn Bible verses; compel 
them to learn the way of salvation, and then, if they will be 
damned, it will be their own fault. There is where you have 
got to land the responsibility. Do not compel them to 
go to the Lord's Supper. Do not compel them to become 
communicants when they have been instructed. That is when 
choice comes in; but how can choice come in rightly, when 
they do not know anything? Compel them to do what God 
says do, and leave undone what God says leave undone, and 



SECOND SUNDAY AF.TER TRINITY. 505 

then the Church of God will prosper as she never did before, 
and the church will be filled, and heaven will be filled. May 
God bless this message to our eternal good. Amen. 

PRAYER. 

O Heavenly Father, we thank Thee for Thy great truth ; for that great 
supper which Thou hast prepared for us; for the invitation Thou hast sent; 
for the willingness Thou hast given us to accept Thy invitation, and to be 
in Thy presence. We pray Thee, O God, that Thou wilt move us now to 
obey all Thy commandments, and to walk in Thy ways, and to serve Thee 
in Thy house, and outside of it, as we never did before. Forgive us of all 
our sins, by thought, by word, or by deed. Lead us into a higher life, and 
may all our strength of mind and body be given to Thee. Hear this, our 
prayer, and bless us in the special effort which we shall now make to can- 
cel the debt of this church. Hear this prayer for Jesus' sake, who taught 
us to pray : 

Our Father, who art in heaven : Hallowed by Thy name ; Thy kingdom 
come; Thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven. Give us, this day, our 
daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass 
against us. Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For Thine 
is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever and ever. Amen. 



THIRD SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY 



PITY THE POOR PHARISEE. 



IvUKE 15: 1-10. 



4l^"WH.EN drew near unto Him all the publicans and sinners for to hear 
Him. And the Pharisees and scribes murmured, saying, This 
man receiveth sinners, and eateth with them. And He spake this 
parable unto them, saying, What man of you having an hundred sheep, if he 
lose one of them, doth not leave the ninety and nine in the wilderness, and 
go after that which is lost, until he find it? And when he hath found it, he 
layeth it on his shoulders rejoicing. And when he cometh home, he calleth 
together his friends and neighbors, saying unto them, Rejoice with me; for 
I have found my sheep which was lost. I say unto you that likewise 
joy shall be in heaven over one sinner that repenteth, more than over ninety 
and nine just persons, which need no repentance. Either what woman,, 
having ten pieces of silver, if she lose one piece, doth not light a candle, 
and sweep the house, and seek diligently till she find it? And when she.hath 
found it, she calleth her friends and her neighbors together, saying, Rejoice 
with me; for I have found the piece which I had lost. Likewise, I say unto 
you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that 
repenteth. 

Sanctify us, O Lord, through Thy Truth ; 

Thy Word is Truth. Amen. 



Dear Christian Friends : — 

The world is full of Pharisees. We are all by nature 
born Pharisees. Pharisees may be known by a certain rule 
among them, namely, this, that there are good and bad peo- 
ple in the world. You know what a universal rule that is 
among all classes. I dare say there is not one in this house 
that has not said in the past, The world is full of good and 
bad people. Did you know that you were a Pharisee when 
you said it? What does it mean that the world is full of 
good and bad people? 

Let me ask you in the Church, What do you think about 
the world? What kind of people are in it? Your answer 

506 



THIRD SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. 507 

is, Good and bad. Did you ever solve that answer? Who 
are Hie bad? Are you the bad ones? Oh, no; the other 
ones. Is that not true? Do you not always mean that the 
other one is the bad one, when you say the world is full of 
good and bad people? Did you ever stop to think that you 
are the bad one? And so there are many aristocratic 
churches that have no love for the poor publicans and sin- 
ners. Many churches think they are so much better than all 
the rest of the world, that the old Pharisaical spirit dwells 
there. 

And this is not only true of the Church, it is true of 
organized societies. I ask a man why he does not belong to 
the Christian Church; he says, "If I live up to the rules of 
my society, I will be saved." I say, "Do you believe in a 
God?" "Yes." "Are you compelled to believe in Christ?" 
"No, sir." "Then, if you expect to be saved without Christ, 
what are you but a Pharisee? And then, after all, do you 
think you are so much better than other people who are not 
among you? If so, you are a Pharisee." 

We do not need to go into the Church and into organized 
societies. Go among any class of low people. If I wanted to 
go from one saloon to the other in this city to-morrow night, 
and ask every saloonkeeper what kind of people are in the 
world, he would give me the answer, "Good and bad." I 
would say, "Are you the bad?" "No, sir; no, sir; there are 
worse people than we are." There is the old Pharisee be- 
hind the counter. 

I do not need to go there; I can go where I have often 
been, into the greatest penitentiary in the United States, 
where there are between two and three thousand of the worst 
criminals at one time. I have gone there day after day, and 
said, "Why are you here? How many kinds of people are 
there in the world?" "Good and bad." "Are you the 
worst?" "No, sir; the people that put us here are worse than 
we are." The old Pharisee sitting in the cell of the peni- 
tentiary. It is said that we have the model prison of the 
United States right before our doors; there are between 
seven and eight hundred young men over in yonder reforma- 
tory. I have talked with no fewer than half a dozen per- 
sonally, and every one has told me, "I am a good boy ; I made 



508 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

a mistake." They all believe that the world is divided into 
good and bad, but think the good are all in yonder reforma- 
tory, and I am not so thoroughly convinced but that they 
are just as good as thousands that are outside, all around 
us. When you analyze that answer carefully, you will dis- 
cover that in the heart of man is the old Pharisee that thinks, 
I am good, and the other man is bad; and, therefore, the 
world is divided into the good and the bad people. 

When you ask God to give His decision about the world, 
He has only one answer : "We are all by nature children of 
wrath; there is none that doeth good, no not one." "Like 
sheep we have all gone astray." "Our righteousnesses are 
as filthy rags." "Except a man be born again he cannot see 
the kingdom of God." Oh, what a different answer God 
gives to that question. When we hold up the lamp of God, 
the Holy Word, we discover that the whole world is full of 
Pharisees — the whole world is bad, and the Pharisee is 
worse than the bad ones. So, you see, after all, there are 
two classes : there are bad people — the whole world is 
bad — and the Pharisee is even the worst of the bad. "Then 
drew nigh unto Him all the publicans and sinners for to 
hear Him. And the Pharisees and scribes murmured; say- 
ing, This man receiveth sinners and eateth with them." I 
would show you, then, as Jesus Christ gives us the example, 
how to 

PITY THE POOR PHARISEE. 

I. He can hardly be called human. 
II. He is not at all divine. 
III. He cannot be angelic. 

I. These poor Pharisees can hardly be called human, 
for all human beings are either men or women, they belong 
to one sex or the other; but in this parable He would show 
us what a real man is, and he would show us what a real 
woman is. The poor Pharisee does not seem to belong to 
either of them. 

1. Is there a man so low in this world that he would 
have no love at all for a lost sheep? "What man of you, 
having an hundred sheep, if he lose one of them, doth not 



THIRD SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. 509 

leave the ninety and nine in the wilderness, and go alter 
that which is lost, until he find it? And when he hath 
found it, he layeth it on his shoulders rejoicing. And when 
he cometh home he calleth together his friends and neigh- 
bors, saying unto them, Kejoice with me; for I have found 
my sheep which was lost." There you find a man ; but, oh, 
how far these Pharisees are from having that spirit of 
humanity! It is said of General Garabaldi that he one 
evening met a Sardinian shepherd in trouble; he had lost a 
single little lamb, and General Garabaldi discharged all of 
his staff, except a few, and said, "Coine on, boys, let us help 
this shepherd find his little lamb;" and they went up and 
down the valleys, and over the hills, until the midnight hour, 
and the lamb had not yet been found. At last the General 
said to the rest of the staff, "You go home now." The next 
morning one of the attendants went to the General's room, 
as was his custom, and lo, the General was sleeping yet, 
although it was an hour later than usual. He walked away 
carefully, came back an hour later, and still the General 
was sleeping; the attendant walked up to him, and wakened 
him ; he began to rub his eyes, he threw back the cover, and 
there by his side lay the Sardinian shepherd's little lamb. 
General Garabaldi had walked over those hills and moun- 
tains from twelve o'clock at night until morning, searching 
the lamb of the poor shepherd, and did not rest until 
he found it, and brought it home, and took it to bed with 
him, that there might be joy in the morning hour. That old 
General is going down in history as a man, but these Phari- 
sees and scribes did not have the manhood in them to have 
as much love for these poor publicans and sinners as a man 
ought to have for a sheep. If you had a flock of an hundred 
sheep, and one of them were lost, it would make no differ- 
ence whether there is church or no church, it would make 
no difference whether there is business on hands or not, you 
would say, "I will not have that perfect number broken; I 
am not thinking far more of that lost sheep than of your 
ninety and nine that are not lost, but the one is lost and I 
will go after it until I find it;" you would go around in the 
neighborhood and inquire, "Did you see anything of my 
little lost lamb? Did you see my lost sheep?" If you could 



510 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

hear no reply you would go on further, and if in yonder 
field you saw a sheep, you would go after it, and if you 
found it was not yours you would go further and further, 
inquiring, "Did you see my lost sheep ?" When, at last, over 
the little hill, you would hear the bleating of the sheep, you 
would run, and when you would behold that it was yours 
you would run joyfully forward, pick it up, put it on your 
shoulders and carry it home. And there were these poor 
publicans and sinners, with lost souls worth more, a thou- 
sand times, than a sheep, and they came to the Lord and 
Savior that they might hear the Word in order that they 
might be saved, and the great Shepherd of Israel picks them 
up, and the Pharisees murmur. They did not have human- 
ity about them, or they would not have grumbled. 

2. Pity the poor Pharisee. He has not got the heart 
of man, he has not got the heart of woman in him. We have 
here the picture of a woman of Palestine. In that country 
we find the custom somewhat different from our own. You 
understand very well that in our own country, when a young 
man and lady become engaged, as a rule there is a gold band 
that speaks of the engagement. In the Holy Land the rule 
is different. When a young man there meets a young lady 
with whom he would love to be engaged for life, he labors 
and toils until he has earned ten pieces of silver, with the 
image of the king on them, and he has them bound into a 
chain, and put around the virgin's neck, and if those ten 
pieces of silver are found there on the day of marriage she 
becomes his wife; but, if one of them should be lost, the 
engagement is forever broken. The Lord Jesus Christ has 
just heard of one of these young women who had lost one of 
these ten pieces of silver, and she was searching up and 
down the house all day, and when night came she had not 
found it yet; she was in great trouble; but she lit her little 
candle and she went about from room to room in the whole 
house thinking, Where have I been in the last day? turning 
over one thing after another ; midnight came, and still the 
lost piece of silver was not found ; the rest were sleeping, but 
she was not; she was in deep trouble, and she searches and 
searches, until all at once her eye falls upon the bright metal 
right before her — it is the lost piece of silver ! The engage- 






THIRD SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. 511 

ment is not broken! She leaps for joy, and, in the morning 
hour she goes from neighbor to neighbor and says, "Kejoice 
with me, for the lost piece is found." She had a woman's 
heart. She had a heart in her that the Pharisee has not. 
And here are immortal souls of publicans and sinners, worth 
more than silver, with the image of the Great King of 
Heaven on them for a covenant that they shall last through- 
out life and forever; and one of these souls is lost — many 
of them are lost — and Jesus Christ came to save them, and 
here are these poor Pharisees murmuring and grumbling 
because He would take the trouble to search for these beauti- 
ful souls that are so precious. 

II. Pity the poor Pharisee not only because he seems to 
lack humanity, but pity him because there is nothing in him 
of the divine. 

1. We should be blind if we did not see that these two 
parables represent something more than even man and wom- 
an. The Lord Jesus Christ Himself is this man that goes 
out and hunts the sheep. You know very well who it is that 
is our Shepherd. Have you never learned the twenty-third 
Psalm? "The Lord is my Shepherd; I shall not want. He 
maketh me to lie down in green pastures: He leadeth me 
beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul: He leadeth 
me in the paths of righteousness for His name's sake. Yea, 
though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I 
will fear no evil : for Thou art with me ; Thy rod and Thy 
staff they comfort me. Thou preparest a table before me in 
the presence of mine enemies : Thou anointest my head with 
oil ; my cup runneth over. Surely goodness and mercy shall 
follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the 
house of the Lord forever." You all know that this Shep- 
herd is none other than the Lord Jesus Christ. Hear these 
•words from the prophet Isaiah (40, 11), "He shall feed His 
flock like a shepherd : He shall gather the lambs with His 
arm, and carry them in His bosom, and shall gently lead 
those that are with young." We have the tenth chapter of 
John, and you all know it, where our Lord tells us that He 
is the Good Shepherd that layeth down His life for His 
sheep. The Lord Jesus Christ had a flock of one hundred 
sheep. When, on the morning of creation, He created man, 



512 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

and found him good, the whole flock was safe ; it was a per- 
fect number — one hundred; when Eve sinned there was a 
lost sheep, and from that time until to-day every one of these 
lost sheep represents the one that ran into the wilderness; 
and the Lord Jesus Christ is the Good Shepherd that came 
to bring the sheep home, and every saved man belongs to the 
hundred — I mean every saved one that is already at home 
in heaven; and those that are saved on earth belong to the 
ninety and nine that make up the hundred ; and, now, every 
soul that is without the kingdom of God is the lost sheep, 
and the Lord Jesus Christ is hunting that sheep; He goes 
down the hills and valleys, and says, "Come unto Me, all ye 
that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." 
He comes to the poor sinner and says, "I am your Shepherd ; 
I will lay down My life for you ;" He comes and takes hold 
of your hand, and picks you up with His human hand, hold- 
ing fast with His divine hand to the Lord God Almighty, 
and says, "The Son of man is come to seek and to save that 
which is lost;" He comes with bleeding feet o'er Calvary's 
hill; He comes with a thorny crown upon His head; He 
comes with bleeding breast and wounded hands, and picks 
up the sinner, and says, "I am your Savior; I am your 
Helper ; I know that you are helpless ; I know that you can- 
not find the way back; but I know that I love you, and I 
have come all the way after you, and now I will help you 
up; I am going to carry you home; and when I bring you 
home all the angels and the saints in heaven will rejoice for 
your salvation; I will say, "Rejoice with Me, for the lost 
sheep has been found." 

Have you been found by this Great Shepherd, dear soul, 
as you sit before me to-day? If not, let me, in the name of 
God, this morning, tell you that He is seeking you. How 
could one who has any divinity in him grumble and murmur 
at the salvation of souls? It does seem sometimes as though 
some professed Christians hate to see the church grow and 
prosper, as though they really thought it too bad that souls 
are added to the kingdom of heaven. Stop Pharisaical 
grumbling and murmuring. It is not divinity that is in 
you if you do that. 



THIRD SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. 513 

2. These poor Pharisees did not possess the spirit of 
Christ, nor did they possess the Spirit of His Church. You 
do not understand this parable correctly if you think this 
woman represents simply a woman; it represents the Church 
of God. 1 heard a man say the other day that the Song of 
Solomon was not fit to be in the Bible. I asked him why ; he 
said it was nothing but an old love story. I pitied that 
man. There are some people who do not know what is in 
the Song of Solomon. How many of you could tell me now, 
if I were to ask you? It is a beautiful love story, but, my 
dear friends, you do not understand that beautiful story if 
you think it is the story of a man and woman. It is the love 
story of Jesus Christ and His Church, and when you read it 
in that light you will pronounce it one of the most beautiful 
pieces of literature ever penned. The old Song of Solomon 
is the song of this woman that has been searching for her 
lost piece of silver — the Church of God, the Bride of Christ. 
It is not only the teaching of the Old Testament, but let me 
call your attention to these words in the New Testament, 
2 Cor. 11, 1-2 : "Would to God ye could bear with me a little 
in my folly: and indeed bear with me. For I am jealous 
over you with a godly jealousy : for I have espoused you to 
one husband, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to 
Christ." Isn't that plain what God meant, that the Church 
of God should be a chaste virgin, to be presented to her hus- 
band, Jesus Christ? Eph. 5, 25-32: "Husbands, love your 
wives, even as Christ also loved the Church, and gave Him- 
self for it; that He might sanctify and cleanse it with the 
washing of water by the Word, that He might present it to 
Himself a glorious Church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or 
any such thing ; but that it should be holy and without blem- 
ish. So ought men to love their wives as their own bodies. 
He that loveth his wife loveth himself. For no man ever 
yet hated his own flesh; but nourisheth and cherisheth it, 
even as the Lord the Church. For we are members of His 
body, of His flesh, and of His bone. For this cause shall a 
man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto 
his wife, and they two shall be one flesh. This is a great 
mystery; but I speak concerning Christ and the Church." 
Do you see, my dear friends, who the bride is, and who the 

33 



514 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

groom is? Suppose we look for a moment at Rev. 19, 7: 
"Let us be glad and rejoice, and give honor to Him, for the 
marriage of the Lamb is come, and His wife hath made her- 
self ready." Itev. 21, 9 : "And there came unto me one of the 
seven angels which had the seven vials full of the seven last 
plagues, and talked with me, saying, Come hither, I will 
shew thee the bride, the Lamb's wife." This bride, the 
Lamb's wife, is the woman who has been searching for her 
lost piece of silver. As the original piece of silver which 
she lost had on it the stamp and image of the king, so these 
two little children presented here at the altar to the Lord 
Jesus Christ this morning receive the stamp of the King of 
Heaven on their hearts, and yet many a dear child brought 
to the altar of God as these were brought this morning has 
wandered away from the Church of God, but they never lost 
the stamp; they never lost the image; and the Lord Jesus 
Christ says now to His bride, the Church, Go out after that 
lost piece of silver ; light the candle and search day and night 
until the lost is found. Have you never heard what consti- 
tuted the lamp of this woman? "Thy Word is a lamp unto 
my feet and a light unto my path ;" again, "We have a more 
sure word of prophecy; whereunto ye do well that ye take 
heed, as unto a light that shineth in a dark place, until the 
day dawn, and the day star arise in your hearts." I hold in 
my hand to-day the lamp with which the woman, the Church 
of God, the bride of Heaven, must go out and search, and 
search, until every lost piece of silver is brought home ; and 
if the Pharisee had any love in his heart, if he had any divin- 
ity there, he would rejoice when the woman has found the 
lost. Oh, may we all, with the spirit of a Garabaldi, with 
his love for the Sardinian shepherd's lamb, go out and bring 
back the little children that have already been dedicated to 
the Triune God. 

III. Pity the poor Pharisee, not only because he has no 
divinity, but because he has within him no reflection of 
heaven — he cannot be angelic. Listen to these Pharisees 
grumble : "Then drew near unto Him all the publicans and 
sinners for to hear Him. And the Pharisees and scribes 
murmured, saying, This man receiveth sinners, and eateth 
with them." Those poor Pharisees, how ignorant they were ! 



THIRD SUNDAY ABTER TRINITY. 515 

They thought they were perfect, and that the Church of 
God, represented by themselves, should be so perfect that it 
ought not to allow itself to have its clothes soiled by sitting 
down with poor publicans — those officers of Borne who tried 
to steal all the money they could when they collected the 
taxes ; they thought it would never do at all for the Church 
of God to sit down and eat at the same table with men and 
women who were known all over the world to have sinned, 
and transgressed the Ten Commandments; and there those 
Pharisees sat in their self-righteousness, and grumbled and 
murmured. Oh, how different they were from heaven ! 

When the Lord Jesus sat down with these poor publi- 
cans and sinners, there was joy in heaven ; there was joy up 
there in the Father's heart, for let us not forget the sympathy 
that exists between this world and the world above. We 
just heard a moment ago that Christ is the head, and we are 
flesh of His flesh, and bone of His bone ; that we are part of 
Him. My dear friends, if Christ is the head, and we are 
part of Him, there is a wonderful sympathy between earth 
and heaven above ; a wonderful sympathy between earth and 
the Father in Heaven ; and that Father in Heaven has such a 
love for these poor sinners, for these lost sinners, that when 
Jesus Christ comes and sits down with them, and eats with 
them, there is joy in heaven. 

And not only joy in the Father's heart, there is joy in the 
Great Shepherd's heart. Let us not forget that the Great 
Shepherd knows what is going on here on earth, and is pres- 
ent with us at our tables, as well as when He sat down with 
the publicans and sinners before He ascended into heaven, 
where He sitteth on the right hand of God, the Father 
Almighty, waiting to come to judge the quick and the dead. 
He knows what is going on, on earth. Could I be an intelli- 
gent man, have my head here, and not know what is going on 
down at my feet? But if we are members of the Lord Jesus 
Christ, we are members of His body, and He knows what is 
going on. Could I be a groom, and not know where the bride 
is? Could I be a groom and know nothing about the bride? 
But we are the wife, we are the wife of the Great Bride- 
groom, who is in heaven, and, oh, what a sympathy between 
His heart and the hearts of us here on earth. 



516 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

And then, think of the joy of those angels up there. "I 
say unto you that likewise joy shall be in heaven over one 
sinner that repenteth more than over ninety and nine just 
persons, which need no repentance." There you find what 
joy there is in heaven when a sinner repents. Every angel 
rejoices. Did you ever stop and ask yourself why the angels 
should rejoice when one guilty sinner repents? I believe we 
know why. We read in the Bible that when God created 
the heavens and the earth, the morning stars sang together, 
and those morning stars were none other than the holy 
angels. Oh, what joy when they could say, "There goes an- 
other star ;" what joy among the angels when they could say, 
"Look, there goes another world;" the morning stars sang 
together at creation, and now, when a man is born again, 
then there is a new heart within him ; and, oh, the angels of 
heaven never notice things that the world calls great, but 
they notice that new creation, and say, "Another star is 
born; there is another child of God born! Sing until the 
corridors of heaven ring — a- man born again on earth!" 

It is not only a new creation, but there is a double joy in 
the hearts of the angels because they see so many things in 
earth that are not purely good any more. When God cre- 
ated the heavens and the earth, He looked, and said, "Be- 
hold, they are good;" when sin came into the world, He had 
to look at the very creature He had created in His own 
image, and said, "It is bad." When man is born again there 
is a new creation, and with that new creation there is a new 
joy in the hearts of the angels. They say, "This reminds us 
of the early morning of paradise. Sing, sing, until the 
heavens ring!" 

Then there is another thing that we must not forget, and 
that is that these angels have not forgotten that band of 
angels that one time were hurled from heaven with the 
mighty arm of the Almighty God, when they rebelled; let 
us not forget that these angels knew what it meant on that 
day, when one-third of the stars fell on account of that great 
rebellion, when the angels became devils; let us not forget 
that they remember what it means to be in hell and to be 
bound in chains there; and let us not forget that the angers 
know what a sinner that repents has escaped, better than 



THIRD SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. 517 

man knows. If you and I really knew what it means to 
escape hell, we would understand what it means for the an- 
gels to rejoice over one sinner that repents. Not only do 
they rejoice because of what the sinner escapes, but on ac- 
count of the joy that he shall reach. I know we talk a great 
deal in the pulpit about heaven's golden streets, and about 
those wonderful beauties, and those eternal joys, and the 
saints and holy angels, but I can almost imagine the angels 
in heaven, whenever they hear man attempting to describe 
heaven, say, "I pity that man for trying to describe some- 
thing he know r s so little about. " Oh, how little we know 
about heaven here! How little we know about that great 
crown that God has in store for you and for me, if we will 
repent, and be faithful until death! But the angels know. 
They know what this repenting sinner is to receive; they 
know the wrath that he escapes, and the glory that is in store 
for him, and consequently there is a joy that runs through 
heaven whenever a man repents. Sing, sing, until the heav- 
ens ring ! There is a new creation on earth that means eter- 
nal salvation! 

I am glad to know that the enemies of Christ were com- 
pelled to pass such a beautiful compliment on Him. They 
meant to find fault with Him when they said, "He receiveth 
sinners and eateth with them/' but thanks be to God, they 
told a great truth. He does sit down with sinners ; He does 
receive them, and what good news that is for you and for 
me. What kind of sinners does He receive? He receives 
born sinners. Some people seem to think it is a terrible 
thing to say that a little child is born in sin, and that that 
child is by nature lost. If the little child is not born in sin, 
and not lost, God never came to save it, but He has told us 
in His Word that He came to seek and to save that which is 
lost. If my child were not lost, God never came to save it. 
Do not go home, as some people do, and say that I said that 
child will be damned. I never said so, and God never said 
so ; but God did say that they must be born again. God did 
say that He came to seek and to save the lost ; and, therefore, 
I am glad to know that there is a Savior that sits down with 
sinners and eats with them — that receives born sinners. 



518 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

And not only born sinners, but great sinners. Oh, you 
who are talking about so many people being good, and others 
being so bad, I would have you to understand that the best 
people that ever lived always called themselves great sinners. 
John was a good man, so admitted by all, but John says, "If 
we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is 
not in us." Paul was a noble man — a hero of heroes in 
God's great battle, but Paul calls himself "the chief of sin- 
ners ;" and if you and I this morning can see into God's holy 
law as we ought to, and can know of God's righteousness 
and justice as we ought to, there is only one answer to 
the question, What am I? / am a great sinner. Thanks be 
to God, I have got a great Savior, and my Savior is^ greater 
than my sins, and will save me. He receiveth sinners. 

But these sinners must be repentant sinners. These sin- 
ners must be able to repent of the actual sins they have com- 
mitted. "Well," says some one, "what if this little babe 
should die to-day, how could it repent?" I say that little 
child can repent of every actual sin it has committed. What 
are its actual sins? Every sinner must repent of his sins if 
he is to be saved. The little child is brought to the Savior, 
and He cleanses it of sin through that Holy Baptism, and it 
has no sins to repent of until it commits them; and when 
it does commit sin, it can repent. So I say again, there is 
joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that 
repenteth, more than over the ninety and nine just persons 
that need no repentance. 

Who are these ninety and nine that need no repentance? 
As a rebuke, it may mean, You Pharisee ; you think you are 
so holy and so righteous that you do not need to repent; if 
so, there shall be more joy in the salvation of these publi- 
cans and sinners than over you. It may mean that there 
was one time one hundred, in creation, the perfect number, 
before sin entered the world; if so, if Adam had to die be- 
cause he sinned, then there would be more joy in the pres- 
ence of the angels, when one of these fallen men is saved, 
than if they never had fallen. It might mean, and I believe 
it does, that when a child of God has died, and gone home to 
heaven, and can sin no more, and needs to repent no more, 



THIRD SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. 519 

that then there is more joy in heaven, not on account of the 
one that is there but on account of the one that is coming. 
And that is true. I may have ten children and love one just 
as much as the other, but when one of the ten is lost, and I 
find the one, the lost one brings more joy to his father's heart 
than the nine that never were lost. You may have two chil- 
dren in your home, one in health and strength, and the other 
lying at death's door; you are standing day and night, hold- 
ing the pulse of the dying child, not because you love that 
child any more, but it is almost at death's door, and you are 
giving all your attention to the sick one and no attention to 
the well one; and, in the same sense, there is more joy in the 
presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repents 
and comes home than over the thousands that are already 
there. 

May God help us this morning to repent of our sins, to 
believe on Jesus Christ, to be faithful to Him until death, 
and at last receive the crown of eternal life. There will be 
joy, unknown in the heart of the poor, stubborn Pharisee, all 
over heaven, and may the bells of eternity ring in this morn- 
ing hour, if any one soul has said, "Now I am going to serve 
my God until I die — help me, Lord Jesus ! Amen." 

PRAYER. 

We ask Thy divine blessing, O Thou Great Shepherd of immortal souls, 
who hast with bleeding feet, and bleeding hands, and pierced breast, and 
thorny crown, come over the hills and dales to take us and carry us home. 
We thank Thee for the forgiveness of sins ; we thank Thee for the Redeemer 
who has paid our penalty; and now, O Lord and Savior, we ask Thee to 
bless every one in this house this morning. Bless the little children that this 
day, as in former days, have here been dedicated to Thee, with the image 
of Thy Son stamped upon their hearts. We pray Thee to bless the dear 
parents who are bringing their children to Thee. We pray Thee to bless 
these aged ones who were brought to Thee early in life ; and others, who have 
come to Thee in later life. We thank Thee, O God, that not an hour has 
passed from infancy until now, that Thou hast not let Thy blessing rest upon 
us, and hast watched us, and called us, that we might come to Thine arms 
and be carried home. Bless the sick who cannot be with us — they are still 
Thy dear sheep, precious in Thy sight. We ask Thee to deliver them ac- 
cording to Thine own good and best way. Thou hast said, "Call upon Me 
in the day of trouble, and I will deliver thee, and thou shalt glorify Me;" 
Thou hast not said whether Thou wouldst cure the body or cause dissolu- 
tion that will take the soul away, to enjoy eternal peace until that body 



520 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

shall be raised again from the dead, and rise a glorious body. We now 
commend all the sick into Thy care, O Great Physician of heaven and earth. 
We now ask Thee to take Thy sheep and lambs — Oh, take all souls and 
keep them in Thy one great fold. We ask it in the name of the blessed 
Savior, Jesus Christ, who taught us to pray: 

Our Father, who are in Heaven ; Hallowed be Thy name. Thy kingdom 
come ; Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us, this day, our 
daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass 
against us. Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil; for Thine 
is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever and ever. Amen. 






FOURTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. 



GOING TO GOD'S GALLERY, 



Luke 6 : 36-42. 



B 



ll^~% E ye therefore merciful, as your Father also is merciful. Judge not, 
and ye shall not be judged; condemn not, and ye shall not be 
condemned; forgive, and ye shall be forgiven. Give, and it shall 
be given unto you; good measure, pressed down, and shaken together, and 
running over, shall men give into your bosom. For with the same meas- 
ure that ye mete withal it shall be measured to you again. And He spake 
a parable unto them: Can the blind lead the blind? shall they not both 
fall into the ditch? The disciple is not above his master; but every one that 
is perfect shall be as his master. And why beholdest thou the mote that is 
in thy brother's eye, but perceivest not the beam that is in thine own eye? 
Either how canst thou say to thy brother, Brother, let me pull out the mote 
that is in thine eye, when thou thyself beholdest not the beam that is in 
thine own eye? Thou hypocrite, cast out first the beam out of thine own 
eye, and then shalt thou see clearly to pull out the mote that is in thy 
brother's eye." 

Sanctify us, O Lord, through Thy Truth; 
Thy Word is Truth. Amen. 



Dear Christian Friends : — 

Among the greatest generals in the world was Alex- 
ander the Great. During one of the battles he received 
a severe cut in his forehead, which ever afterwards left 
him with an ugly scar. When he conquered the world it 
was the desire of his admirers to have an exact painting 
of the great general. The greatest known painter in the 
world was secured, but there was one thing that puzzled 
this painter, and that was, how to paint an exact likeness 
of the great general and not have the scar to show. After 
meditating a long time on the plan, finally this happy 
thought came to him: "I will paint Alexander the Great 
with his head resting on his hand, so that his own hand 

521 



522 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

will cover the scar." Oh, that all the Christians in the 
world would learn of this heathen painter to cover up the 
defects and the scars of their fellow men. Let us this 
morning, by the help of the Holy Spirit 

GO TO GODS GALLERY 

and there have our pictures taken. We will take but three 
pictures : 

I. Containing all who have two eyes. 
II. Containing all who have at leant one injured eye. 
III. Containing all who are totally blind in both eyes. 

I. The Lord God is going to take pictures this morning 
and you are all invited to step up for the first time, for it 
is His preference that you should be on the first picture. 
You are to have two good eyes, that you may see the 
Father's great mercy; that you may see Him as the only 
Judge; that you may see the great joy of being of a forgiving 
spirit; and that you may see the great harvest of giving. 

1. Now arise while God takes a view of you. See 
God's great mercy. "Be ye therefore merciful, as your 
Father also is merciful." It takes two good eyes to see 
the mercy of God. There are so many people who seem to 
think that God is not merciful. Oh, that their two eyes 
were opened! The Father in Heaven must be merciful or 
He would not have given His only Son, Jesus Christ, to die 
for the sins of the world. Suppose you had only one son, 
and the world wer ? yours, — yes, the whole universe, and 
you were called upon to give up that only son, do you 
think you could do so without a heart full of mercy? That 
is what God the Father did when He gave up His only 
Son to come here into the world to become so poor that He 
slept in a borrowed grave. Will you yet doubt His mercy? 
Then open both eyes and look at it constantly. 

Not only is the Father merciful, but surely the Son, 
Jesus Christ Himself, is merciful. "For God so loved the 
world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever 
believeth in Him should not perish but have everlasting 
life." This Son came of His own free will. He said, even 



FOURTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. 523 

when standing at the very gates of death, that lie might 
call twelve legions of angels to deliver Him. Yes, He 
could have stepped down from the cross when they mocked 
Him and said, "If Thou be the Christ, come down from the 
cross." It was not necessary for Jesus Christ to come and 
die; He had committed no sin; He had done no wrong; He 
might have remained in heaven; it w r as not necessary for 
Him to sleep out on the ground without a pillow, but all 
this He did because He loved the w T orld, because He was 
the Good Shepherd that laid down His life for the sheep. 
And surely no one can see Jesus Christ hanging on the 
cross, and dying, without reading in His wounds, L, O, Y, 
E, Love; or, in other words, great mercy. Open your eyes 
and see the mercy of Jesus Christ. 

Our eyes ought to be opened to see the mercy of the 
Holy Spirit. Sometimes we seem to think that God the 
Father is greatest, and God the Son the next greatest, and 
the Holy Spirit is just something that does not need very 
much attention. Eemember that little child this morning, 
according to God's own command, was baptized in the 
name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, 
and the Holy Spirit and the Son are equal with the Father, 
or it would not have been baptized, and commanded to be 
so, in that Triune name. Now^here did God say, Baptize in 
the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of Gabriel; no- 
where did He say, Baptize in the name of the Father, and 
of the Son, and of Alexander the Great; but, Baptize in the 
name of the Triune God, coequal in all eternity. Open 
your eyes then to this great truth, that the Holy Spirit, 
who comes to us through the Word and the Holy Sacra- 
ments, is none other than the merciful God, who is calling 
this morning, and is always calling, and gathering, and 
enlightening, sanctifying, and trying to keep us. Open 
your eyes, then, both eyes, to see the mercy of your God. 

2. Then, if you keep your eyes open, as God wants 
them open, you will see that God only is our Judge. "Judge 
not, and ye shall not be judged; condemn not, and ye shall 
not be condemned." If there is any one prerogative that 
Jesus Christ has kept for Himself, it is judgment. "The 



524 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

Father hath committed all judgment into the hands of His 
Son. "The Word that I have spoken, it shall judge you on 
the last day." Now the question arises, have you and I 
got our eyes open wide enough this morning to see that 
the only Judge is Jesus Christ, and that He is the only 
One who has a right to condemn? God does not want me 
to be a judge; He does not want you to be a judge; He does 
not want me to condemn; He does not want you to con- 
demn. He is the Omniscient God; He knoweth all things; 
He knoweth the environments that surround every indi- 
vidual, and on that last great day, He only will have the 
right, and will use it, to pass judgment, and if there is any 
one to be condemned, it is for Him to do it, and not for 
us. Open your eyes now and stop judging, and stop con- 
demning, for this all belongs to God. 

3. In the first picture you must have your eyes open 
wide enough to have a really forgiving spirit. "Forgive, 
and ye shall be forgiven." If you have your eyes open wide 
enough to see the mercy of God, how He has forgiven you, 
and how He has forgiven me, then surely we ought to have 
that spirit within us that longs to put His own spirit into 
exercise, and yet, how many people there are who love to 
carry in their own souls a spirit -that says, I will keep my 
distance; I will stay away from this one, and that one. 
Open your eyes. If you do not open your eyes this morn- 
ing wide enough to see that it is a glorious privilege to 
forgive everyone on earth, you cannot be on this picture. 

4. Not only must we have a forgiving spirit, but we 
must open our eyes wide enough that we may see the glori- 
ous harvest of giving. "Give, and it shall be given unto 
you, good measure, pressed down and shaken together, and 
running over, shall men give into your bosom. 4 But with 
the same measure that ye mete withal it shall be measured 
to you again." God says these words, and it is one of 
the hardest texts for the Christian Church on earth to be- 
lieve, that is in the Bible. How many people are there 
who have their eyes open wide enough to actually see 
that when you give in God's name, that you are getting? 
How many people are there who can really see the glorious 



FOURTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. 525 

harvest of giving? Unless we do this, we are disobeying 
one of the plainest commandments of God. In another 
place it is said, "Remember the words of the Lord Jesus, 
how He said, It is more blessed to give than to receive." 
In the last Book of the Old Testament we are told that if 
we should give to the Lord the one-tenth of all our net 
income, God would open the windows of heaven, and He 
would shower down a blessing upon us that we should not 
be able to receive. How many people are there in the 
world to-day who have their eyes open wide enough to see 
those windows open? How many actually believe what 
God says in this verse? Oh, there is a blessing in giving 
that opens our eyes and keeps them open. Somewhere a 
poet has sung: 

"The sun gives ever, so the earth; 
What it can give, so much 'tis worth. 
' The ocean gives in many ways — 

Gives baths, gives fishes, rivers, bays. 
So, too, the air, it gives us breath; 
When it stops giving, comes in death. 
Give, give, be always giving — 
Who gives not, is not living. 
The more you give, the more you live." 

Did we ever live any more than we did in the last few 
months? Has not our own experience demonstrated this 
great fact? We have never been happier than we have in 
the last six months, when we have raised nearly six thou- 
sand dollars above current expenses, and you never were 
happier than last Sunday, when you swept the old debt 
away. I know you felt like saying something that could 
not be uttered, and even the old doxology could hardly 
contain it. 

"God's love hath in us wealth unheaped ; 
Only by giving is it reaped. 
The body withers, and the mind 
Is pent up by a selfish rind. 
Give strength, give thoughts, give deeds, give pelf; 
Give love; give tears, and give thyself. 
Give, give, be always giving — 
Who gives not, is not living. 
The more you give, the more you live." 



526 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

That poet had his eyes open when he sang these words. 

"He only breathes, and never lives, 
Who most receives, and nothing gives ; 
Whom none can praise — whom none can thank — 
Creation's blot — creation's blank." 

This, my dear friends, is the first picture that God has 
taken this morning. Now let us look at it and see how 
many are on. Are those people on who seldom think of 
the mercy of God? Not one of them. Are those people on 
who are constantly finding fault with this one, and that 
one, trying to raise opposition instead of creating love? 
Not one of them. Are the main members of this church 
all on this picture? Not one of them. Is the church coun- 
cil on? Let us look. Not one of them. Is the preacher 
on? He cannot be found. God has taken a picture this 
morning, but lo, and behold, not one of us is on it. There 
is not one of us who thinks enough of God's mercy; there is 
not one of us who is not judging; there is not one of us 
as forgiving as we ought to be; there is not one of us fully 
carrying out the command of giving. 

II. God will take another picture. He does not care 
to have anybody on this, but, nevertheless, you are wel- 
come if you have one injured eye. "And why beholdest 
thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but perceivest 
not the beam that is in thine own eye? Either how canst 
thou say to thy brother, Brother, let me pull out the mote 
that is in thine eye, when thou thyself beholdest not the 
beam that is in thine own eye? Thou hypocrite, cast out 
first the beam out of thine own eye, and then shalt thou 
see clearly to pull out the mote that is in thy brother's 
eye." 

1. The Lord God is ready to take another picture, and 
the first ones that shall come on this picture are the ones 
that very seldom think of the great mercy of God. Oh, how 
many of us live from morning until night never thinking 
of the Father's mercy, never thinking of the Son's mercy, 
never thinking of the mercy of God that is calling, and 
calling, and calling, that we might enter His kingdom. 
Oh, what an injured eye we have, not to see the mercy of 
the Triune God! 



FOURTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. 527 

2. Those are invited to come into this picture, who 
want to be judges themselves, and now, do not all crowd 
on at once. You think in your own heart, oh, how many 
weaknesses our pastor has. You sit back there and think 
how much better you are. God looks at you and says, You 
old hypocrite, you think you are so much better; you think 
you are the judge; you think you are to condemn; you 
cannot see your own faults; you cannot see w r hat ugly 
things you are doing; you cannot see how you are tearing 
down the kingdom of heaven; you cannot see how you are 
an abomination in God's sight. Oh, look out for that eye 
of yours. It is bad. It has a beam in it. 

All of you are invited into this second picture who are 
condemning others. Look out, now, you best members 
of this church. You think you are not condemning, but 
how often you have said harsh things about people who 
are far above you. How often, like the old buzzard flying 
over the prairies of the west, you have never seen a flower, 
but you have been hunting an ugly carcass. How many of 
you there are who are constantly picking at this one, and 
that one, in order to lift yourselves up. Watch out, now, 
or else you will be on this picture, and you do not want 
to be there. If you are passing judgments on others, if 
you are condemning others, remember you have taken the 
place of your God; remember you are taking God's 
honor on yourselves; remember that your little mind is not 
as large as a grain of sand, compared with the great mind 
of God. You do not know under what circumstances this 
one and that one were born; you do not understand the 
environments surrounding them, where they are living; 
you do not understand the temptations that these are 
battling against. I say here to-day that if I had been born 
and raised in the family that some low drunken sot has 
been born and raised in, I might be a low drunken sot to- 
day. I claim that if I had been born and raised in some 
families where some boys and girls have been raised, I 
might be in yonder penitentiary to-day. Then stop your 
judging; stop your condemning. God is going to do that. 
Be careful, for you are going on this second picture. 



528 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

3. And why do you not forgive? This thing of sitting 
around at home and saying, I have nothing against this 
one, and nothing against that one, and never taking a step 
to tell it, is all wrong. If you have nothing against one, 
in the name of God, why don't you come and tell him so? 
If you have nothing against your enemy, why do you not 
step up to him and say, "I have been wronging you and I 
ask your forgiveness, and from now on, let us work to- 
gether for the spreading of God's kingdom?" If you have 
fully forgiven, why are you waiting for an opportunity to 
say something ugly again? Yes, I am your friend, while 
I am with your friends, but oh, how often we are just 
waiting for an opportunity to have the right surroundings, 
to say that ugly, cutting thing, that unforgiving thing? 
I am not trying to put you below myself to-day. I simply 
mean to say that human nature is a dreadfully deceitful 
thing, and you do not need to go out of your own house to 
find it; you do not need to go out of your own body to find 
it; you do not need to lay your hand upon the head, or 
upon the heart of another. The worst enemy I have in 
the world is in here, in my own heart, and the worst enemy 
you have is in your own heart. Beware that you are not 
looking for motes, with beams in your eyes. 

4. And how much have you given during your past 
life for the extension of God's kingdom? God has com- 
manded the Church to go out into the world and make dis- 
ciples of all nations. This cannot be done without sending 
missionaries. This cannot be done without sending honest 
men who must make their living, not by stealing, but must 
receive the gift of the Church of God, to go forth to give 
their valuable time for the spreading of this kingdom. 
How many dollars have you given to send a man of God to 
the heathen lands? How many dollars have you given for 
the bettering of humanity? How many dollars have you 
given to clean out the brothels in our larger cities? How 
many dollars have you given for the upbuilding of God's 
kingdom in the world? How many dollars have you given 
for the ^support of your own pastor in the past twenty-five 
years? And then, on the other hand,, figure up. how much 



FOURTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. 529 

yon have spent for tobacco; how much you have spent 
for whisky; how much you have spent for luxuries that 
you would not have needed; how much you have spent for 
worldly amusements; how much you have spent for Sa- 
tan's interests instead of for God's. Put one column on one 
side and the other column on the other, and do a little 
mathematical work, and the result will be that you will 
find that you have done very, very little for God's king- 
dom. 

The picture is taken. What is the result? Oh, the re- 
sult is given by the Lord my God, and might well be called 
"Christ's Cartoon." These little motes in the eye are very 
dangerous. I met one of my own members on the street 
the other day, with an eye tied up ; a little emery had gone 
into that eye and almost injured it, and I tell you he was 
thankful when that little speck was picked out, that his 
eye would be saved. The eye is too delicate to have even 
a small grain of sand in it. Oh, these specks and motes 
must come out, but how ridiculous it is for a man w T ith a 
large log pointed, driven right into his head, and coming- 
out on the other side, and the other so heavy it stands on 
the ground, almost bending over under its weight, stand- 
ing there calling for his neighbor to come to him, for he 
cannot go with that log, and when the neighbor comes, he 
stops, and says, "Just hold still here, I see a little speck 
in your eye," and he stands there himself with a log in his 
eye. — A cartoon that would make the world laugh if it 
were painted to-day, and God painted it. We are going 
to God's gallery this morning. Who are these people 
with the beam in the eye? While Jesus Christ wanted 
everybody on the first picture, He found none, and while 
he cared for no one on this second picture, we are all on it. 
We are all on this picture. You have got that beam in 
your eye, and I have got it in mine, and the great truth is 
that we never can see our own faults like we can see the 
faults of others. Oh, if we could just hold this picture be- 
for our eyes this morning and see ourselves as God sees us, 
w T hat mercy we would have on others, and oh, how anxious 
we would all be to have these beams taken out of our 
eyes, that we might see clearly to take the mote out of our 

34 



530 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

brother's eye, and then take it out. It is not wrong to 
take out the mote, the Savior did not say so. "Thou hypo- 
crite, cast out first the beam out of thine own eye, and then 
shalt thou see clearly to pull out the mote that is in 
thy brother's eye." It is my duty to help you get rid of 
your motes, and it is your duty to help me get rid of mine, 
but get the beam out of your own eye first, and then come 
and help me get the mote out of my eye ; and so may God 
help me to see the beam in my own eye, that I may help 
you to get the mote out of yours. Here is your picture. "How 
canst thou say to thy brother, Brother, let me pull out the 
mote that is in thine eye, when thou thyself beholdest not 
the beam that is in thine own eye? Thou hypocrite, cast 
out first the beam out of thine own eye, and then shalt thou 
see clearly to pull out the mote that is in thy brother's 
eye." 

III. There is still another picture that God wants to 
take this morning, and that will include all who are totally 
blind in both eyes. "And He spake a parable unto them, 
Can the blind lead the blind? Shall they not both fall 
into the ditch? The disciple is not above his master; but 
every one that is perfect shall be as his master." The dis- 
ciple is not above his master. In other words, you never 
in all your life saw a priest that raised his people above 
himself ; you never saw a Sunday-school teacher who raised 
his scholars above himself; you never saw a parent that 
raised his children above himself; you never saw a teacher 
in the public schools that raised his scholars above himself. 
These things being true, it is easy to know who shall be on 
this third picture. 

1. All parents who are not safe. When David was in 
exile and his son Absalom was out in the battle, king Da- 
vid gave the command to the generals to spare the life of 
the boy. The battle was on. Poor David could not rest. 
He stood at the gate and waited for a messenger, and 
when he saw the messenger coming in the distance, David 
made up his mind that something was wrong, "It may 
be that my son is killed or injured," and he cried at the 
top of his voice, "Is my son Absalom safe?" And to-day 
there are thousands of children all over this land, crying 



FOURTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. 531 

out with their immortal souls, "Are father and mother 
safe?" And if father and mother are not safe, how can 
they lift their children above themselves? The disciple 
is not above his master. When we stop to think how many 
men there are that are not even baptized in the name of 
the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, men who seldom see the 
inside of the house of God, men who are virtually tied in 
the very chains of Satan, how it makes our hearts bleed 
to know that those men have boys at home, that those 
men have girls at home; and when we know that some 
mothers will do their baking and their washing on Sunday, 
instead of going to God's house; when we know that they 
do not care one whit wether the Bible is ever read or not; 
when we know that they make no effort to bring their 
families to the church, what else are some parents but 
blind teachers of the blind? 

2. And how is it with the teachers of our public 
schools? The question is not asked these days, Does the 
teacher believe in God? and the general idea is that our 
public schools do not teach religion, and consequently it 
makes no difference what the teacher thinks about re- 
ligion. The great truth is overlooked that every man 
teaches unconsciously what he is. It makes no difference 
whether I am talking religion or not, the man who asso- 
ciates with me a little while must either grow to desipse 
me, or I will make a Lutheran of him. No difference 
whether we are teaching mathematics or anything else, 
what a man is, he is, and what he is, he lives, and what he 
lives, he teaches, and the man that stays in contact with 
any teaching is taught, and whatever a man is hearing all 
the time has its influence on him. Before I came to this 
city, at the time when President McKinley was lying at the 
point of death, a superintendent of the public schools said 
to the children, "What is the use to pray? The whole na- 
tion has been praying for McKinley and now he dies any 
way." I would just as soon have my children go to school 
to the devil as to that kind of a superintendent. Where 
did God ever say that if you shoot a man, and the nation 
prays, that he is going to live anyway? And when I look 
around through our public schools to-day and find the false 



532 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

science that is sometimes taught for true science, and the 
influence of some ungodly men and women, I say, Blind 
leaders of the blind! When I make that statement I am 
not finding fault with the public schools any more than 
with many other institutions, but I say school boards 
should see, in this Christian land, that no teacher shall 
stand at the head of children who has no love for the Bible, 
who has no love for the Church, and who has no love for 
things that are good and holy. 

3. And when I look into the Sunday-school and find 
that many teachers make it no matter of conscience at all 
to be at teachers' meeting; when I find some teachers 
make it no matter of conscience at all whether they go to 
the Lord's Supper or not; when I find that some teachers 
make it no matter of conscience at all whether they take 
an active part in Church work, I am compelled to cry out, 
Blind leaders of the blind! For, dear friends, how can 
the disciple be above the master? If the master neglects 
his duty, then the disciple will. You will find two kinds 
of scholars in every school, good and bad, but even the 
best scholars are sometimes glad if the teacher is a little 
careless; even the best scholars hunt out the teacher that 
is not strict, and right in that class will slight their 
studies. In other words, if we are not willing, as teachers 
in our Sunday-schools, if we can, to attend the teachers' 
meetings; if we are not willing to take part in all the 
church work as models; if we are not willing to make sac- 
rifices that our children can imitate, and lift them up, I 
say again, we are blind leaders of the blind, and have not 
only one injured eye, but have no eyes at all. It makes no 
difference if this strikes my best friend, my brother, my 
sister, it is truth, and God knows it, and you know rt. 

4. And if these things are true in the Sunday-school 
class, if these things are true in the home, if these things 
are true in the public schools, oh, how true they must be 
in the pulpit. If there is any one chapter in the Bible that 
makes me feel ashamed of myself, it is this chapter, where 
it shows that heathen are kind to heathen, that no man 
needs to be a Christian to be true and faithful to those that 
are faithful and true; where it holds up before us Christ 



FOURTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. 533 

as the model; oh, how short we all come from this. And 
yet, I can confess before God and man, by His help, I want 
to be a better man to-day than I was yesterday; by His 
help I want -to be a better man to-morrow than I can be to- 
day. In other words, I recognize that my God stands back 
of me, and in front of me, with the command back of me, 
with Himself in front of me, saying, "Be ye merciful, for 
your Father in heaven is merciful. Be ye holy, for I am 
holy" — striving for perfection, and thus by the help Of 
God, I will try to rise just as high as it is possible for this 
poor sinner — this miracle of grace — to rise, as an imi- 
tation of my Savior, and a model for all my people. I 
would love to rise to that point in the spiritual perfection, 
that I could say to my superintendent and to all my Sun- 
day-school teachers, and to all my Church council, and to 
all my children, Follow me, because I follow Christ, and 
thereby lift them up to a higher level day by day, for God 
never left any man stand to-day where he was yesterday. 
"I go to prepare a place for you, and then I will come 
again, and take you unto Myself, that where I am, there 
ye may be also.' 1 We are not to stand still; we are to rise 
higher, and onward and upward, until we breathe our last 
breath, and the soul takes its flight into the presence of 
God, and then we will see a picture He will paint for us in 
heaven. 

And now, what is the result of this last picture? Look 
out there. Do you see yonder man with a rope in his 
hand, and with his sight gone, and with the rope tied 
around the neck of a dear child? See him walk out yonder 
lonely path, and just beyond is yonder great precipice; 
he is walking on, and is blind, and he has the child tied 
to the other end of the rope and it must follow; the strong 
arm of the blind man holds that rope, and he is getting 
nearer and nearer to that great abyss; a few more steps 
and over he will go. Is there no one to bring him back? 
Is there no one to run and hold him? There he goes! 
Down he goes ! — a blind leader of the blind — and they 
both fell down into the gulf. "And He spake a parable 
unto them, Can the blind lead the blind? Shall they not 
both fall into the ditch?" 



534 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

Yet, oh! how many people are falling down because of 
unfaithful preachers, because of unfaithful teachers, be- 
cause of unfaithful fathers and mothers — blind leaders 
of the blind. I said a while ago that I felt ashamed, when 
I hear this text, of myself, and I hope you all feel ashamed 
of yourselves this morning. But let us not forget to thank 
God if we can feel ashamed of ourselves. That itself is a 
wondrous gift of God, to be able to be ashamed of our- 
selves. There are two men in this world that are very 
mean — in fact, they are the meanest: The one is standing 
before you this morning preaching the Gospel, and the 
other is yourself. God have mercy on us all. Amen. 

PRAYER. 

O God, our Heavenly Father, we feel in our hearts this morning that 
we are not fit nor worthy to call ourselves members of that first picture 
which Thou hast placed in Thy great gallery, and yet, we pray this morn- 
ing for forgiveness, and for a spirit of love, and for a spirit of leaving all 
judgment to Thee, and for a benevolence that shall make us subject, by Thy 
grace, to be placed upon that beautiful photograph painted in heaven. We 
pray Thee to help us this morning by Thy holy law, and by the gift of Thy 
Holy Spirit, to behold the beam in our own eye, and by Thy grace and 
strength wilt Thou draw it out, and wash the wounded eye with the balsam 
of Cavalry, Thine own blood, and keep it clean, that by the help of this 
wounded eye healed, we may be able to see the mote in the brother's eye, 
and help us also by Thy grace, to make it clear. If any of us this morning 
have found ourselves to be blind leaders of the blind, help us to open our 
eyes, help us to see as Thou wouldst have us see, and make us safe leaders 
of our own families, of our own children, of our own Sunday-schools, and 
all others that are around us. O God, give Thy blessing to the public schools 
of this country, and help that the conscience of the teachers may grow there, 
and that in every lesson the children may be led closer to the Great Teacher. 
O God, we ask Thy special blessing upon those of our own number who 
in this morning hour are suffering intensely. Lord help them, according 
to Thine own promise, "Come unto Me, all ye that labor and are heavy 
laden, and I will give you rest." Yes, help us to hold fast to that command 
of Thine, "Call upon Me in the day of trouble, and I will deliver thee, and 
thou shalt glorify Me." Heavenly Father, Thou hast always delivered all 
Thy saints of old, and Thou wilt deliver us in Thine own good way, in 
Thine own good time and Thy way and Thy time are the best way and the 
best time. Give us a faith, O Lord, that will always hold, even as a child 
would cling to its mother's breast, to these sweet words: "All things work 
together for good to them who love God." Pour into our hearts a double 
love, and finally, when our work on earth is finished here, give us that 



FOURTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. 535 

grander home above. We ask it all in the name of the Blessed Jesus, who 
taught us to pray : 

Our Father, who art in heaven; Hallowed be Thy name. Thy kingdom 
come; Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us, this day, our 
daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass 
against us. Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil ; for Thine 
is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever and ever. Amen. 



FIFTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY, 



HOW THE SAVIOR CAUGHT SIMON. 



Luke 5: 1-11. 



H 



ii \ If ND it came to pass, that, as the people pressed upon Him to hear 
the Word of God, He stood by the lake of Gennesaret, and saw 
two ships standing by the lake ; but the fishermen were gone out 
of them, and were washing their nets. And He entered into one of the 
ships, which was Simon's, and prayed him that he would thrust out a little 
from 'the land. And He sat down and taught the people out of the ship. 
Now when he had left speaking, He said unto Simon, Launch out into the 
deep, and let down your nets for a draught. And Simon, answering, said 
unto Him, Master, we have toiled all the night, and have taken nothing; 
nevertheless, at Thy Word I will let down the net. And when they had 
this done, they enclosed a great multitude of fishes ; and their net brake. 
And they beckoned unto their partners, which were in the other ship, that 
the}' should come and help them. And they came, and filled both the ships, 
so that they began to sink. When Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at 
Jesus' knees, saying, Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord. For 
he was astonished, and all that were with him, at the draught of the fishes 
which they had taken. And so was also James, and John, the sons of Ze- 
bedee, which were partners with Simon. And Jesus said unto Simon, Fear 
not ; from henceforth thou shalt catch men. And when they had brought 
their ships to land, they forsook all, and followed. Him." 

Sanctify us, O Lord, through Thy Truth; 
Thy Word is Truth. Amen. 



Beloved in Christ: — 

Lying below the level of every other sea in the world, 
beautiful to admire, is the Sea of Galilee, more intimately 
connected with the precious life of our Savior than any other 
water on earth. In that sea have been caught some beau- 
tiful fishes, but the largest fish that was ever caught there 
was the apostle, Simon Peter. 

Peter was a great man even before he was converted. 
I believe that he himself recognized that he was a great 

536 



FIFTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. 537 

sinner. You will remember that when Christ was being 
tried before Pontius Pilate, the old apostle stood there 
and denied his Master, and even began to curse and swear. 
That was not the first time that Peter eursed and swore. 
A man does not begin at thirty or forty to swear. The 
real truth is that Simon Peter swore many a time down on 
the Sea of Galilee before he was a child of God. It was 
nothing uncommon for him to lie. A man does not begin 
to lie when he is old. It was the boy — the fisher boy — 
that was very sinful, and when the Lord Jesus Christ was 
with him in that vessel, he recognized the divinity of the 
draught of fishes, and he cried out, "Depart from me, for 
I am a sinful man, O Lord." 

He was not only a great sinner as a boy, and as a 
young man, but he was also a great worker. "We have 
toiled all night," said he to the Savior, "and have caught 
nothing," and in the morning he was washing his nets, and 
when asked to thrust out the ship, and go out into the 
deep, he did not stand and argue, and say, I worked all 
night, I cannot work in the day time. It made no differ- 
ence to Peter whether he had toiled all night or not, when 
anything was to do, he did it. He was not an eight hour 
man, or a ten hour man; he was a man who worked fifteen 
hours if necessary ; day and night, if it was necessary. He 
was a great worker. 

Not only was he a great worker, but he was a great 
man — as great as any man, not being born again, can be. 
There was in him a heart that was bigger than the Sea 
of Galilee, a heart of kindness. Many a man would have 
said to Jesus Christ, "Get out of my boat. What business 
have you there?" But Peter said, "You can have it." 
When asked to go out into the deep, he went. There 
wasn't a favor that any one could ask for of Peter, that he 
wasn't ready to say, "Here I am, what can I do for you?" 
There is the mark of greatness. 

He not only had a big heart in him, not only was he 
kind, but he had in him something that proved to the 
world that he was a leader. When the fishermen wanted 
a man to lead the way, Peter went ahead. When there 
was anything to say or do, Peter was the spokesman and 



538 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

doer; and when Jesus Christ from all eternity saw what 
Peter would be, and in the present what he was, He said, 
"That is the kind of man I must have among My apostles." 
And so I want to show you to-day/ by the help of God, 

HOW THE SAVIOR CAUGHT SIMON. 

I said a moment ago he was the biggest fish ever 
caught, and when the Lord Jesus Christ caught Simon 
Peter, He caught a wonderful fish, and the text that I have 
just read shows us how He did it. 

I. He caught Simon's place in history. "And it came 
to pass." It looks as though it were just an accident that 
Peter and John should be standing there on the shore that 
morning washing their nets, that Jesus should stand on 
that shore, and that the people should be coming in all 
directions and crowding in, until He was forced, as it 
were, to step out into the boat. It all looks like an acci- 
dent. It may look like an accident that you are sitting 
where you are this morning, but I tell you, my dear friends, 
there is not a moment in a man's life that there is not a 
plan, and that man is helping to fill out that plan in his 
actions. "In Him we live, and move, and have our being." 
It was not an accident that Peter was there washing his 
net that morning. It was not an accident that Jesus hap- 
pened along the shore. In the great plan of God that night 
of fishing without fish was a preparation to bring about 
what took place that morning at that moment. I tell you 
that when Peter wrote his Epistle, you will discover three 
times that he speaks of the fact that in all eternity man 
is elected for the purpose that he is to fill in life; and we 
are told in another place that before the foundation of the 
world was laid, we are called in Christ. The apostle Peter 
was in the mind of God before there was a Sea of Galilee, 
and it was no accident that that morning Peter and Christ 
and the multitude and the Word of God came together. 
No. The very first thing that God did that morning was 
to throw His net of Providence over Peter and hold him 
to that point where he was just at that moment. "And it 
came to pass" — and God made it come to pass. 



FIFTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. 539 

2. Not only did He catch his place in history, but the 
next thing He did was to catch his empty boat. If Peter 
had caught fish that night and the boat had been full of 
fish, Jesus Christ would not have stepped into the boat, 
and would not have told him to thrust out into the deep. 
It was not bad luck that Peter had that night. Many a 
time when we fish from morning until night and cannot 
find fish, we seem to think it is bad luck. When we work 
from one end of the year to the other, and at the end of the 
year it looks as though we had gained nothing, we say it 
is a bad year, because we have failed. There are some- 
times nights when w T e do not catch a single fish that w r e 
are more successful than when we catch a boat load of 
them. And I would have you understand that when you 
possibly find a month in your own family history when 
everything looks as though it were going backward, it may 
be that you are making the greatest success. So then, I 
say that the second thing that the Lord Jesus Christ did, 
was to catch the empty vessel at the right time, which He 
might make His pulpit, to preach one of the greatest ser- 
mons in one of the greatest churches. That sermon had 
the Sea of Galilee for its foundation, resting in the hand 
of God ; that sermon over it the temple of the blue sky ; that 
sermon had back of it yonder hill on which the people were 
crowded in multitudes; and there it was that the Lord 
Jesus caught Simon's empty vessel. 

3. And by catching his vessel, He caught his hand. 
Some people would be in the house of God to-day, if only 
there were a hand extended to them, saying, Come in. It 
does not cost anything to shake hands; it doesn't cost 
anything to go out and see some poor fallen wretch and 
lift him up. The Lord Jesus Christ could have taken that 
vessel Himself and shoved it out from the shore, but He 
did not want to do it Himself. What you and I can do 
ourselves, w T e do not need to ask God to do. Peter had 
his arm and hand, and Jesus Christ wanted that hand, and 
He said, "Peter, come and thrust this ship out a little bit 
that I may preach to these people," and when Peter put 
his hand to the oar, Jesus Christ took hold of his hand, 
and held him, and moved it out from the shore, so that 



540 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

Peter could not run away — had him right there in the 
boat. 

4. By holding his hand, He also caught his ear. 
When you are going to catch a fish, you have got to catch 
it, and when Jesus Christ wanted to catch Peter, He did 
not want to catch only the boat and the hand, but He 
wanted to catch the ear of that busy man for the Gospel. 
Peter was not like so many men in these days, who, be- 
cause they work all night, cannot come to church. Peter 
worked all night, and worked in the morning, and when 
he was told to thrust out the vessel, he did so, and he sat 
down, and while Christ was preaching to the vast multi- 
tude, He did not fail to catch the ear of Peter sitting in 
that boat. Peter thought Christ was preaching to the 
people. Jesus was preaching to Peter. Every word went 
into that man's ear, and it is the Word of God that makes 
Christians. "How shall they believe in Him of whom 
they have not heard ?" If, therefore, you do not hear the 
Word of God, how can you have faith wrought in your 
hearts? Just what the Savior preached that day I do not 
know to the letter, but we have heard enough of the ser- 
mons of Jesus Christ and of His sayings, to know about 
what He would say. He would say to that vast multitude, 
"You are all born in sin, and you know it." He would say 
to that vast multitude, "Unless you are born again, you 
cannot enter into the kingdom of heaven." He would say to 
that vast multitude, "Unless you repent of your sins and 
believe in Jesus Christ, the only Savior, you cannot find 
your way to the Father who made these hills and this sea." 
He would say to those people, "He that is now speaking 
to you is the Son of God, the promised Savior" — and there 
Peter is sitting by the side of his God, and his ear catches 
that great truth. And Jesus Christ must have said to 
those people, "Not a sin can enter heaven; it must be 
washed away" — and there sat that intelligent great man 
Peter, cursing and damning many a time on that water 
before in that same boat, and God is with him. ( And I 
gather that Jesus Christ must have said, "I am always 
with you." He must have told them, "I am the promised 
Son of Abraham, the same yesterday, to-day and forever." 



FIFTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. 541 

And Peter began to wonder, "Is it true that all these days 
1 have had this God with me in this boat and did not 
know it? Have 1 been cursing and damning all these days, 
with God in my presence? Oh, what shall I do?" — and 
there he could not get away; he was in the boat; Christ 
caught him by the hand, and by the ear, and held him. 
5. He not only caught his ear, but he caught his w T ill. 
^ T hen the sermon was over, says Jesus Christ to Peter, 
"Launch out into the deep" — He did not say, "Come on, 
let us go to the shore now," No, "Go on out into the deep," 
and Jesus said it once, and that was all that was neces- 
sary. Simon Peter grasped the oar and shoved the little 
vessel out into the midst of the ocean — out into the deep. 
He obeyed; he had tried to catch fish all night, and failed; 
he had been working all morning; he was tired; he was 
a fisherman and knew that the time to fish is at night 
and not in the daytime ; he knew where the fish were to be 
found, along the shore, and not in the middle of the sea. 
To human reason it looked the most unreasonable thing 
God could have asked — to take that boat, in daylight, and 
go out in the middle of the sea; the reason of Peter would 
have said, "Thou mayst be a good Teacher, but Thou know- 
est very little about fishing," but Peter recognized the 
truth that the One that was talking was the Son of God, 
and the commandment must be obeyed without question; 
in other words, reason must be taken captive, and now "at 
Thy word, I will go," and he took hold of the oars, and 
w r ent. Why did he go? He went because Jesus Christ 
caught his will. And do you know why it is that so many 
people are going to be lost and damned in spite of the 
churches, in spite of the Word of God, in spite of the 
preaching of the pure Gospel? Why is it that they will 
be lost and damned? Jesus wept over Jerusalem, not be- 
cause it was a bad city, in a sense; He wept over it not 
because it had not heard the truth; not because it had not 
seen the Savior — they had seen their Savior; they had 
heard their Savior; they had seen His miracles; they 
had been convinced in mind that this is the Son of God, 
but despite that fact they would not accept Him, and He 
wept, and said, "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest 



542 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee, 
how often would I have gathered thy children together, 
even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and 
ye would not." Ye would not! Ye would not let your will 
be caught. And there is where so many people will fail 
on the great Judgment Day. They heard the truth; they 
heard the law; they heard the Gospel; they heard of re- 
pentance; they heard of heaven; they know the only way 
to get there, but their own stubborn wills will damn their 
souls for all eternity. Jesus Christ caught the will of 
Simon. 

6. After He had caught his will, then He also caught 
his success. We sometimes think that the Church is a 
place that will do for women, and for people of not very 
much business, but we business men, we have got to run 
our business, as if God hadn't anything to do with your 
business. Whenever a man tries to run his business with- 
out God, he is going to run it against the face of God, and 
will fail. Whenever a man cannot take God in as a part- 
ner, his business is a failure. Peter worked all night and 
did not catch a fish. God was assuring him that night 
that when you are going to catch fish, you have got to have 
God. It looked as though Peter's business was a total 
failure, no fish all night; it looked as though everything 
was going wrong; but when they went out into the high- 
way of that little sea Jesus stopped and said, "Now cast 
out your net." The will was caught. There is faith in that 
man's heart; he throws out the net, and pulls it up, and 
lo, it looks as though all the fish of the sea had gathered 
at one place. Who gathered them? The birds understand 
the voice of their God; the fish of the sea understand the 
voice of their God; only stubborn man will refuse to listen 
to the voice of God; those fish had come at the voice of 
God, and Peter pulls until he sees there are too many for 
him; he beckons for his partners, John and James, to 
come over and help, and then they fill one ship, and they 
fill the other, until the water began to run over the edge, 
and he begins to see that they are going down; and lo, 
Christ not only caught Peter's will, but caught his busi- 
ness, his success; and when he saw that his business was 



FIFT H ' SUNDAY AFTER THIN IT Y . 543 

God- business, and that all these years he had been trying 
to run it alone, his sins were brought to his notice, and 
they heaped up before him like mountains, and he cried 
out, "O my Lord, depart from me, a poor sinner/' 

7. In other words, it was not so much the fish that 
Jesus was after; not so much the boat that Jesus was 
after; not so much the hand alone that Jesus w T as after, 
but it was Peter's soul that He wanted; and that very 
moment when the apostle Peter fell down before Jesus 
Christ and acknowledged his sins, and saw that there was 
no room in that ship for God, and for the sinner and his 
sins, that very moment Jesus caught his soul. Peter was 
right in one way, there was not room in that boat for his 
sins. I tell you a man cannot keep his sins and stand 
with God in the same little boat. Peter's logic was good. 
Either Christ has to get out of this ship, or I must; or 
if I do not, at least these sins have to get out; we three 
cannot stay. So Jesus showed him that Peter could stay 
there, and He could stay there too. It was not the object 
to get rid of Peter, nor Jesus, but the thing to get rid of 
was Peter's sins. "Oh, Peter, I will stay with thee, and 
thou stay with Me, and let us get rid of these sins, and I 
will forgive you, Peter; your soul is Mine; I have caught 
you." He caught his soul. 

8. Then, when He had his soul, and had his will, and 
had his hand, and his vessel, and his success, then, my 
dear friends, there were two things more He had to have, 
and those two things were his tongue and his life. So 
they went out to the shore, and now, he says to Simon, 
"You have been a fish on this sea for a long time; your 
heart is bigger than this water; your soul is greater than 
this sea; you have some fish to look after that are greater 
than all the fish in this net; I want you to understand 
that the world is full of men; the world is full of women, 
and the world is full of little children, and one little soul 
is worth more than all the fish in all the seas; I want you 
to understand that I am going to make use of you from 
now on as I never did before; I have caught your soul, and 
I want your tongue. You are a great speaker; you have 
been using that tongue to curse and swear, and damn, 



544 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

and lie; I to-day give you a new tongue; I want you to 
use that tongue to spread My everlasting Gospel; I want 
you to go out into the world now and look for people 
wherever you can, and fish for men, and fish for women, 
and fish for little children; I will make you greater than 
that — "a fisher of men." 

9. "I not only have caught your tongue, but from 
this day on I want you to understand that I have caught 
your life." The nets were dragged out to the shore; the 
vessels were tied to the banks, but Peter said "Now take 
care of my business; I have got a greater business." — 
And they forsook all, and followed Christ, and in that 
moment Jesus took the life of Peter and kept it, and 
watched it day and night. And when one time, standing 
by the fire, while Jesus was being tried before Pontius 
Pilate, the old fisher spirit arose again in Peter, Jesus 
Christ drove it back with a look — a look, and the old 
devilish spirit of Galilee was driven out, and Simon Peter- 
went out of the door, and fell down, and wept bitterly, 
but poor Simon was still in the hands of Christ, his body 
and his soul — his whole life, and he went on, making 
one of the grandest of all the apostles. What would his- 
tory have been, had it not been for that morning on Gali- 
lee? What would history have been, had there not been 
a Peter among the twelve apostles? What would Pente- 
cost have been without Peter's sermon? What would 
martyrdom have been with the absence of Peter, when his 
life's journey was over, and all had been consecrated to the 
Master, dying with his head down, instead of up, on the 
cross? There never was a man who died so nearly like 
Christ as the apostle Peter, the only difference being that 
Peter was crucified with his head down and his feet up, 
in honor of the Great God that saved him in the boat on 
Galilee. 

And now, dear friends, what else can I advise you to do 
this morning, except, in the words of Jesus, to say to you, 
"Launch out into the deep!" Launch out into the deep 
of Jesus' sayings; into the deep of His salvation; into the 
deep of His service. 



FIFTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. 545 

Oh, the Word of (rod is a great deep. The Psalmist 
says, "Thy judgments are a great deep." I hold before me 
to-day the Word of the eternal God. Is the Sea of Galilee 
deep? This Word is deeper. Is the Sea of Galilee six 
miles wide? This Word of God reaches from here to the 
throne in heaven. Is the sea a healthy resort? Nothing is 
so healthy as God's Word. And therefore I would urge 
you, as a congregation, to launch out into the deep of 
God's sayings. You cannot afford to be out of the Sunday- 
school, old and young; you ought to be teaching, or sitting 
down studying the great deep of God's W^ord. You cannot 
afford to miss a divine service. I do not say this because 
I am a minister of the Gospel, but I say it because I have 
a soul, just as you have a soul, and I know if my soul did 
not feed Sunday after Sunday on the same truths that it is 
trying to give out to your souls, that I would spiritually 
starve. You are willing to spend dollars, and a fortune, to 
clothe your children, and to fill your table with food for 
the body, but you are perfectly willing to starve your souls, 
and the souls of your children. Launch out into the deep 
of God's eternal Word. And not only do so in the church, 
do so in your home. Do not let that deep old Word of God 
lie on your table from week to week without knowing what 
is in it, without learning what is in it. Search the Word 
of God, and search it daily, and go on deeper, and deeper, 
and deeper. Did you ever read Gladstone's "Impregnable 
Rock?" Read that great book of his, by one of the greatest 
minds of recent times. Hundreds of men, like Gladstone, 
have told us that after searching God's Word all their 
lives, they are only playing along the shores of this great 
deep. 

Not only launch out into the deep of God's sayings, but 
launch out into the deep of His salvation. The main thing 
is to be a saved man; the main thing is to be a saved 
woman; the main thing is to be a saved child; the main 
thing is to be ready any moment should death come by 
sickness or by accident; should death come slowlv, or come 
like a flash of lightning, the main thing is to be prepared 
every moment to go home to God. Launch out into the 

35 



546 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

deep of God's eternal salvation, wrought out on Calvary 
and offered to you by free grace. 

Last of all, launch out into the deep of His service. 
What are you doing for Christ? What are you doing for 
the extension of God's kingdom? Oh, how many people 
there are — it seems to me the vast majority — who are 
simply living in God's Church; simply eating at His table, 
and actually doing nothing for the extension of God's 
kindgom. Your hand is just as strong as Peter's was ; your 
body may be just as strong as his was. Oh, what a mighty 
influence Peter has wielded in the world, in the name of 
God, because he launched out into the deep of His service; 
and what a little, insignificant nothing of a mark most 
people are leaving in the world; they live and die, and 
nothing is left back in the world to tell what they ever 
did for God's service. Will you not, this morning, by the 
help of God, resolve to take up some work you are getting 
no pay for? Will you not this morning resolve, by the 
help of God, to start out and do something to win some- 
body for the Lord and Master? Will you always ask the 
question, What can I get for this, and for that? Oh, you 
and I need money; we need pay for our services, to live, 
but, my friends, the things that we work for, for pay, 
ought to be the smallest amount of our work; the greater 
amount of our work ought to be for God's glory, without 
expecting anything in return, but His strength to do it. 

Then launch out into the deep. The shallow waters 
■are always dangerous. How vividly is seen before our 
miiMs this morning that boat going down the East Kiver 
in New York, with a thousand Lutherans on it, and many 
other people? Oh, we look at that picture when the flames 
leap up and some of our own acquaintances dash down 
over that vessel and leap to death. Think of a thousand 
funerals in New York during the past weeks, and all 
caused by a poor vessel in shallow water, in the East Eiver. 
Thousands of people stepped on that old vessel to go to 
that picnic that day that would not have dared to go on 
a larger vessel and crossed over the mighty deep, and yet, 
they would have been far safer out in the deep than in that 



FIFTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. 547 

shallow water. The shallow waters are dangerous. The 
urcat deep is not dangerous. II is not once in a thousand 
times that a vessel ever goes doAvn in the middle of the 
ocean; and the reason that some people will have a dread- 
ful calamity, in comparison with which that in East Eiver 
was nothing, on that last great Judgment Day, is that they 
have been sailing all the time down the shallow w T aters 
of their own infidelity; down the shallow waters of 
their own foolish notions, instead of going out into the 
great deep of God's eternal Word. Launch out into the 
deep! "He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved." 
Stay out of the shallow waters — "He that believeth not 
shall be damned." Amen. 

PRAYER. 

O God, our Heavenly Father, we thank Thee for this privilege of de- 
livering Thy message to Thy people ; we thank Thee that we are permitted 
to speak this morning to the ears of the dear little children, the young peo- 
ple and the aged. We ask Thy divine blessing upon those who are already 
in Thy service, in their humble way doing all they can to spread Thy king- 
dom here on earth. And we pray Thee this' morning that Thou wilt help 
each one to get into his little vessel with the Lord and God, and to sail 
out and do what he can for Thy glory. Oh, do Thou catch our places in 
history this morning; do Thou catch our little vessels, and though they are 
empty, show us that Thou art able to fill them with Thy truth ; we pray 
Thee to catch our hands and keep them; catch our ears to hear Thy mes- 
sage ; and catch our wills, to be obedient to Thy commands ; and catch our 
souls, O God, to be Thine forever. We pray Thee, Heavenly Father, that 
Thou wilt catch our success in business ; help us to work with Thee and 
ask Thy guidance in our doing. We pray Thee to use our tongues to Thy 
glory. And we pray Thee to take our lives from now on until that hour 
which the world calls death, and use these lives as Thou didst use the life 
of the Apostle Peter. O Lord God, we now ask Thee to go with us to our 
respective homes, and may we feel to-day it is a good thing to meet in Thy 
house, and to have our souls fed on the bread of life; and may the bread 
which we have eaten this morning, newly create in us a hunger and thirst 
after righteousness. Help us to realize that salvation is alone in Thee. In 
Thy great mercy accept us, for Christ's sake, who taught us to pray: 

Our Father, who art in heaven; Hallowed be Thy name. Thy kingdom 
come; Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us, this day, our 
daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass 
against us. Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil ; for Thine 
is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever and ever. Amen. 



SIXTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY, 



ADMISSION ABOVE. 



Matt. 5: 20-26. 



f 



ii ^^OR I say unto you, That except your righteousness shall exceed the 
righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter 
into the kingdom of heaven. Ye have heard that it was said by 
them of old time, Thou shalt not kill ; and whosoever shall kill shall be in 
danger of the judgment: but I say unto you, That whosoever is angry with 
his brother without a- cause shall be in danger of the judgment; and who- 
soever shall say to his brother, Raca, shall be in danger of the -council ; but 
whosoever shall say Thou fool, shall be in danger of hell fire. Therefore, 
if thou bring thy gift to the altar, and there rememberest that thy brother 
hath ought against thee ; leave there thy gift before the altar, and go thy 
way; first be reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift. 
Agree with thine adversary quickly, whiles thou art in the way with him ; 
lest at any time the adversary deliver thee to the judge, and the judge de- 
liver thee to the officer, and thou be cast into prison. Verily I say unto Thee, 
Thou shalt by no means come out thence, till thou hast paid the uttermost 
farthing." 

Sanctify us, O Lord, through Thy Truth ; 

Thy Word is Truth. Amen. 



Beloved in Christ : — 

The world is in the habit of measuring success by health, 
by wealth, and by fame; but a man may be ever so healthy 
in this world ; he may be ever so wealthy in this world, and 
he may be ever so famous in this world, if, on the great Judg- 
ment Day he is ordered to go down from God's face where 
the departed ones are — the lost — that man surely has not 
been successful. It is, after all, the Judgment Day that will 
decide as to whether one has been successful in this world or 
not. Nor does success in this world consist simply in being 
admitted into large assemblies. During the past week we 
have had a great National convention, and undoubtedly many 
desired to enter who could not; but that was no great loss 

548 



SIXTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. 549 

to them; but what a loss it would be on the last great day if 
it were discovered then that we are not elected unto eternal 
salvation. 1 wish to speak Jo you this morning in all 
brevity on 

ADMISSION .ABOVE. 

I. Our time here is short. 
II. Only perfect righteousness ivill admit to heaven. 
III. Heaven is absolutely closed to the best human right- 
eousness. 
• IV. Heaven is free to all who come in the right way. 

I. Our time here is short. — Little children, young peo- 
ple, and aged. 

1. As I go from house to house, I need not remind you of 
the fact that the cemetery is partly filled with little short 
graves ; all I need to do is to look at your own pictures hang- 
ing on the walls, and in nearly every home I am pointed to a 
picture of a son, or a daughter, who early in life have gone 
home to their God. Therefore, even little children, it is not 
saying too much when I say that for you, your time is short. 

2. This is especially true, also, of young people. It was 
Adam and Eve in the youth of their creation whom Satan 
tempted and brought down to death. As we look through 
the New Testament carefully we observe that Satan was not 
in the habit of possessing old men and old women, as much 
as he was young people. Look at the different instances of 
Christ's casting out devils, and you will find that He is cast- 
ing them out of the young Gadarene; He is casting them 
out of the young woman, Mary Magdalene; the real truth 
of it is that young people are the very objects of Satan; they 
are living in a time when temptations are rife, and when lust 
is strong, and when temptations are ready to break in on 
all sides, and lead them astray. Therefore I would say to 
you young men and women, do not think because you are 
strong and well and have not passed the age of twenty-five 
or thirty, that therefore you are going to stay here another 
half century. The real truth of it is that many young men 
and young women are brought down to death because of the 
strong temptation of Satan in those days. 



550 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

3. And you, fathers and mothers, with gray hair, or none 
at all, on your heads, you know the old saying that young 
people may die, and old people must. There is no question 
about your time being short ; there is no question about your 
setting your house in order; if you intend to make a will, 
make it; if you have anything that is not done, that ought to 
be done, do it this week; your time is short; it must be. 

II. And if this is true that our time is short, then let us 
not forget the great truth that nothing but perfect righteous- 
ness can ever admit any of you to heaven. This is the will 
of God ; this is the will of the angels ; and this is the will of 
the saints. 

1". This is the will of God. If we go to the next to the 
last chapter of the Bible we find that there is no doubt at all 
about what kind of a place heaven shall be. Speaking of 
those outside — "But the fearful, and unbelieving, and the 
abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sor- 
cerers, and idolaters, and all liars, shall have their part in 
the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone : which is the 
second death" — not a word is said about these people going 
to heaven. And, in the same chapter, "And there shall in 
no wise enter into it anything that defileth, neither whatso- 
ever worketh abomination, or maketh a lie; but they which 
are written in the Lamb's Book of Life." Heaven is not to 
be another house of death and misery. In the first verse of 
the last chapter we have this picture of heaven : "And he 
shewed me a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal, pro-' 
ceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb." And in 
this same chapter we find that those that will be lost on 
the last day will be lost forever, and those that will be 
saved on that day will be saved forever; "He that is un- 
just, let him be unjust still ; and he which is filthy, let him 
be filthy still; and he that is righteous let him be right- 
eous still; and he that is holy, let him be holy still." If 
this verse says anything, it does say that heaven will be 
pure and hell will be defiled, and if it is a fact that a 
man can be lost on the Judgment Day and then be saved, 
then it is a fact that a man can be saved on the Judg- 
ment Day and again be lost. Not a man on earth will admit 
that. Then why would you take half of God's Word and 



SIXTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. 551 

turn and twist it to suit your own foolish notion, and try 
to make that stand that suits 30111* notion? The real truth 
is that heaven is a place where nothing but perfect righteous- 
ness can enter — so saith the Lord our God. 

2. This is not only the will of God; it is also the will 
of the holy angels. They have not forgotten that first angel 
and his followers who were hurled from heaven. If heaven 
itself were again to become a place that is to be defiled, the 
holy angels would not have left the throne on high to sing on 
the plains of Judaea when Christ was born. Little atten- 
tion would they have paid to Christ in the garden of Geth- 
seinane, or bothered to roll the stone away from the grave, 
if they had believed that heaven itself shall become a sin- 
ful, corrupt earth. 

3. Nor would the saints on high want heaven defiled 
again. We have a picture in the Tth chapter of Revelations 
of those that are saints, and this is what they sing : "Bless- 
ing, and glory, and wisdom, and thanksgiving, and honor, 
and power, and might, be unto our God forever and ever. 
Amen." "And one of the elders answered, saying unto me, 
What are these which are arrayed in white robes, and whence 
came they?" They do not want their wiiite robes defiled by 
ungodly men and women who should enter there. "Whence 
came they?" Oh, what a comfort this next verse must be 
to every sick one that would love to be here to-day and can- 
not. "And I said unto him, Sir, thou knowest. And lie said 
unto me, These are they which came out of great tribulation, 
and have washed their robes, and made them white in the 
blood of the Lamb." Oh, what a comfort for those aching 
hearts and aching heads of Christians who to-day are lying 
supinely upon their sick beds; but when they reach heaven 
it is not their will, nor is it the will of a single angel, nor is 
it the will of God, that unrighteousness shall enter heaven. 

III. I would say further, that heaven is absolutely closed 
to all human righteousness. "For I say unto you, that ex- 
cept your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the 
scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the king- 
dom of heaven." 

1. How often I have heard Sunday-school teachers talk 
about the Pharisee as though he were a mean, low man. I 



552 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

have heard ministers of the Gospel hold up the Pharisee as if 
he were the lowest of the low. No wonder that the people 
are misled in understanding the Scriptures. You take all 
the argument away from Jesus, if that were true. The real 
truth is that the scribes and Pharisees were considered the 
best people that lived on God's earth in the days of Christ. 
Who were the scribes? Why, they were the men of God who 
copied the Old Testament for the people ; they were the men 
who interpreted God's Word, and read it in the synagogues ; 
they were the people who taught theology; they were the 
people to whom every one looked for advice in the things that 
pertained to sacred things. And who were the Pharisees? 
When I study the history of the Pharisee closely, I discover 
that he got his name from the enemy and did not give it to 
himself. The Pharisees were a people who dated back to the 
Babylonian captivity and became national in reputation 
between the second and first centuries before Christ; they 
were a people who had the utmost respect and love for God's 
holy law, written and oral ; they were a people who were so 
far above the average in their piety that the enemy looked 
at them, and said, "Look at the separatists" — and that'is the 
very meaning of the word Pharisee ; they were a people who 
felt that they were too noble and too good to associate with 
the low trash of the country; they were a people who were 
educated and had no use for ignorance, and tried their best 
to lift the people up to their own level ; they were the people 
who were orthodox, in opposition to the Sadducees, who were 
infidelic, who did not believe in the resurrection of the body, 
what we would call in this day agnostic. The Pharisee did 
believe in the resurrection of the dead ; he did believe in the 
holy angels; he did believe in a Judgment Day to come. 
They were the preservers of God's holy law, and the only 
reason that the Lord Jesus Christ called them hypocrites, 
was because they did not live according to the spirit of the 
law, as much as they did according to the oral form handed 
down by tradition, for in many respects the law of Jesus 
Himself commends the thing the Pharisee did, and the real 
truth is that Paul himself, one of the greatest of all men, was 
a student of Gamaliel, the Pharisee, and he called himself the 
Pharisee of Pharisees. Let us therefore not lose the argu- 



SIXTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. 55:5 

meiit that the Lord Jesus Christ gives us in this lessou to-day. 
He says this, "I am uow talking to you, My disciples, in the 
presence of people known as the scribes and Pharisees; a 
people that are looked up to as the best people on God's earth, 
and I want to tell you, my dear friends, that this thing is 
true, that they are the best people on God's earth, as far as 
human righteousness is concerned; nevertheless, unless you 
have a righteousness that will exceed the righteousness of the 
best people that to-day are living, you cannot enter into the 
kingdom of heaven." There is a force in that argument that 
every man should take home to himself. 

2. How many people there are in this day w T ho are living 
in religious organizations outside of the Church, who really 
think they are going to get to heaven thereby. I know that 
all Christians know better ; I know that even those ministers 
of the Gospel and those members of churches who are in- 
structed in the plan of salvation, know, for instance, that 
Masonry can never save a soul ; but, on the other hand, there 
are hundreds and thousands who are in the Masonic lodge 
to-day (and I only mention this lodge because it is the mother 
of all of them) who are not Christians, who will tell me and 
tell you, that "if we only live up to the rules of our order, we 
are all right." If a man is all right, he is going to heaven, 
and if he does not go to heaven, he is all wrong; and I say 
right here to-day that if Masonry can take a man to heaven, 
every man in the Church that is no Mason, ought to go to Ma- 
sonry and get out of the Church. Isn't that logical? And if 
it cannot take a man to heaven, it is time that everybody is 
learning that his righteousness has to be something that will 
exceed the righteousness of the Pharisee; it has to exceed 
the righteousness of the Mason; it has to exceed the right- 
ousness of the best man on God's earth, no difference what 
his name is, or he will never enter heaven. That is Scrip- 
tural. 

3. I will go a step further for fear you should think I 
have a prejudice against one thing or another ; I say any man 
in any church, no difference whether it is known by the name 
of Lutheran or Roman Catholic, or by any other name, any 
man in the Christian Church, who thinks he is going to get 
to heaven because of his righteousness will never see heaven 



554 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

— ■ never ! Heaven is absolutely closed against human right- 
eousness, because there is none. The prophet knew what he 
was talking about when he said that all our righteousnesses 
are as filthy rags. "There is none good, no, not one/' says 
Jesus Christ. Are you going to believe Jesus Christ, or some 
one else? Oh, that you would all get the argument of this 
Gospel lesson to-day. The best man on God's earth, without 
Jesus Christ, has no righteousness that can enter heaven at 
all. "For I say unto you that except your righteousness shall 
exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall 
in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven." 

IV. The last thought that I wish you to take home with 
you to-day is this, that heaven is open to all who come to 
Christ and to God in the right way — open to all. But how 
do we come in the right way? 

1. The first thing to do to come in the right way is to 
acknowledge that there isn't a single commandment of the 
ten that will not condemn us — not one. Before our text 
to-day the Savior said, "Whosoever therefore shall break one 
of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall 
be called the least in the kingdom of heaven." There are 
some people who think there is at least one commandment 
that they have kept. I have no doubt if I were to ask you to- 
day, "Have you kept all of the commandments?" you would 
say, "No, I have not kept all of them ;" if I were to put the 
next question, "Is there one that you have kept?" I believe 
there are some people who would say "Yes." I believe there 
are some people who would say, "There is one commandment 
I have never broken, and that is the fifth ; I never killed any- 
body." The Lord Jesus says, if you ever expect to get to 
heaven, you have to admit that you did kill somebody — that 
is the argument of the whole text. "Ye have heard that it 
was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not kill ; and who- 
soever shall kill shall be in danger of the judgment ;" this is 
the commandment the fewest people think they have broken. 
"But I say unto you, That whosoever is angry with his 
brother without cause shall be in danger of the judgment; 
and whosoever shall say to his brother, Kaca, shall be in 
danger of the council; but whosoever shall say, Thou fool, 
shall be in danger of hell fire." In order to understand this, 



SIXTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. 555 

verse, we have to understand a little of the political situation 
in Jerusalem. They had three kinds of judgments in Jerusa- 
lem. . There Avas a small court of seven rulers, and these 
rulers could be found in an office on any street, just the same 
as we find a Justice of the Peace, or a Notary Public. These 
seven men would virtually settle all the smaller disputes. If 
they could not succeed in settling the dispute, it would go 
up to the Seventy-one, the Sanhedrin, or the great council; 
and if anything was not settled there, down beyond Jerusa- 
lem there was a big valley which in Hebrew was called Ge- 
hinnon; this same valley in Greek was called Gehenna; this 
same valley in English is called the valley of Hinnon; this 
valley is the place where the old false god, Moloch, was ; and 
that false god was a god with two great big arms, and inside 
of this god there was a fire made red hot, and when people 
wanted to sacrifice, and bring the greatest sacrifice they could 
to their god, th}ey would go and throw even their innocent 
children into the arms of this red hot god and burn them to 
death ; the result was that the valley was filled with the skulls 
of people burned in the valley of Hinnon, in the valley of 
Gehenna, and from that very word we get the word hell 
found throughout the New Testament. That is what Christ 
meant to tell the people ; He meant that if you are angry 
with your brother without a cause, you ought to be taken be- 
fore the first council ; if that goes any further, and you call 
a man Raca — a vain fellow, or a shallow-head — you 
ought to be taken before the great council; and if you 
go on further yet and call your own brother a fool, you 
ought to be taken down into the valley where you will burn ; 
in other words, "But whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be 
in danger of Gehenna, or hell fire." The great argument of 
the Savior is, If you think you have not broken the fifth com- 
mandment, ask yourself the question, Have I never been 
angry? If you say you have not, you are lying, and if you 
have, you had murder in your heart. Have you ever gone 
further and found fault with a man because he could not 
reason as well as you could, because he could not learn as 
well as you could, because he does not have as strong a mind 
as you have? Have you stood up and called him a shallow 
head, a vain fellow — Raca? If so, you have found fault 



556 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

with God. It is not your fault if you cannot learn as well as 
some one else ; it is not your fault if you are not as bright as 
some one else, and the man that is finding fault with you, and 
calling you a shallow minded man, is himself a thoroughly 
bad man, and has murder in his heart. And, furthermore, if 
he goes so far as to call a Christian brother a fool, he is 
mean ; he is mean enough to be put into the arms of the red 
hot god Moloch to be burned. Put yourself to the test. Is 
there one here to-day that has always kept the easiest of all 
the commandments there is to keep? Not 'one. Then we know 
we are condemned and guilty of sin; but I say that every 
man that ever expects to enter heaven must acknowledge him- 
self condemned ten times. If the easiest commandment of 
all the ten is condemning you and me, what will the other 
nine do? They will condemn us, and the result is that if you 
and I ever expect to reach heaven, we have to come as God 
wants us to come, find ourselves condemned, and then what? 
2. Then be reconciled to Jesus Christ. This whole ser- 
mon, filled with the law and its interpretation, drives people 
to Christ. Jesus Christ Himself, the Savior of the world, 
was the door and the way that leads to heaven. This same 
One that preached this Sermon on the Mount said : "I am 
the Way, the Truth and the Life, and no man cometh unto the 
Father but by Me-" Be ye reconciled to God. I cannot say 
anything better on that subject than to quote the apostle 
Paul. II Cor. 1 : 17-20. "Therefore, if any man be in Christ, 
he is a new creature : old things are passed away ; behold, all 
things are become new. And all things are of God, who hath 
reconciled us to Himself by Jesus Christ, and hath given to 
us the ministry of reconciliation; to-wit, that God was in 
Christ, reconciling the world unto Himself, not imputing 
their trespasses unto them ; and hath committed unto us the 
word of reconciliation. Now then we are ambassadors for 
Christ, as though God did beseech you by us ; we pray you in 
Christ's stead, be ye reconciled to God." I stand before you 
to-day, that ambassador of God, as Paul stood before the Cor- 
inthians, and I say to you in the name of God, Be ye recon- 
ciled to God! "For He hath made Him to be sin for us, who 
knew no sin ; that Ave might be made the righteousness of God 
in Him." Therefore, dear friends, the righteousness that can 



SIXTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. •>•>< 

enter heaven, that can admit us above, is not your righteous- 
ness, not my righteousness, but the righteousness of the Lord 
Jesus Christ, who took upon Himself your sins and mine, and 
gives us this righteousness which admits to heaven. Oh, dear 
friends, that you all had the righteousness of Christ this 
morning, and throw away that idea that you have righteous- 
ness of your own, that will admit you to heaven. If every 
man in the United States understood the sermon that I am 
preaching this morning, he would not for a single day be 
anything else than a child of God. 

3. We must not only be reconciled with Christ, but be 
reconciled with Christians. "Therefore, if thou bring thy gift 
to the altar, and there rememberest that thy brother hath 
aught against thee ; leave there thy gift before the altar, and 
go thy way ; first be reconciled to thy brother, and then come 
and offer thy gift." When the Lord Jesus Christ died for 
us, He put it into the hearts of all Christians to do something 
for Him, and when we do something for Him, that is called 
a gift, which should be brought to His altar. Every time, 
therefore, that you kneel down in prayer you bring your 
gift of thanks to God's altar; every time you give your 
talents or give your money to God's kingdom, you bring 
your gift to the altar; every time you come to the Lord's 
Supper, you come to bring your gift to the altar; but, 
dear friends, the Savior says there is something more im- 
portant than giving money to the Church; there is some- 
thing more important than kneeling down on your knees 
in prayer; there is something more important even than 
coming to the Lord's altar and partaking of the body and 
the blood of the Master, in some moments. In what mo- 
ments? In those moments when you have some enemies, 
and you have made them, and it is your fault; the first 
thing for you to do is not to bring that gift, for God does 
not care for that gift until you make that right ; if you are 
reconciled with Jesus Christ you must be reconciled with 
His children. Jesus Christ is the head, and the Christian 
Church makes up His members. How can I get along 
if my right foot is going to fight against my left? How 
can I get along if my right hand will not cooperate with 
my left? How can I get along if the members of my own 



558 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

body are going to fight each other? If I have a mind, the 
members of my body must work in conformity with that mind 
in order to move smoothly; and just so Jesus Christ, the 
Head of His church, wants us to be reconciled among each 
other, and have a love for each other; and if you have not 
got it, don't come to the altar. Do not pray when you ought 
to go to your neighbor and make up. These prayers that 
come from hating hearts do not amount to anything; gifts 
from people who will not talk to a brother, do not amount to 
anything. This thing of partaking of the body and blood 
of Christ with hatred in your heart to God's own children is 
all wrong, and we must not be careless about going to the 
holy communion; it is not a place to go and partake of sim- 
ply wine and bread; it is not a place for style, or wearing 
fine clothing; it is a place to come, reconciled to God and 
man ; and if there is any one in this house to-day that has not 
got peace with his brother, the best thing he can do is to stay 
away from the communion, or go out and make peace with 
his brother before he comes to the Lord's altar. This is the 
Gospel of the wonderful Christ that came to die for us, and to 
give us a righteousness that will admit to heaven, and noth- 
ing else will. May God grant his righteousness to you, is 
my prayer. Amen. 



SEVENTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. 



SEVEN LOAVES OF BREAD AND SEVEN BASKETS OF CRUMBS. 



Mark 8: 1-9. 



IN those days the multitude being very great, and having nothing to 
eat, Jesus called His disciples unto Him and saith unto them, I have 
compassion on the multitude, because they have now been with Me 
three days, and have nothing to eat. And if I send them away fasting 
to their own houses, they will faint by the way ; for divers of them came 
from far. And His disciples answered Him, From whence can a man 
satisf}' these men with bread here in the wilderness? And He asked them, 
How many loves have ye ? And they said, Seven. And He commanded 
the people to sit down on the ground ; and He took the seven loaves, and 
gave thanks, and brake, and gave to His disciples to set before them ; 
and they did set them before the people. And they had a few small 
fishes ; and He blessed, and commanded to set them also before them. 
So they did eat, and were filled ; and they took up of the broken meat 
that was left seven baskets. And they that had eaten were about four 
thousand : and He sent them away. 

Sanctify us, O Lord, through Thy Truth : 
Thy Word is Truth. Amen. 



Dear Christian Friends : — 

From the beginning of the Bible to the close you will 
find the number seven a holy number. In six days God 
created the heavens and the earth, and on the seventh He 
rested from all His labors; and the first seven days consti- 
tuted the first week. I have no time to-day to show you 
how often the number seven is given as a holy number. 
Seven times we find the old patriarchs bowed to each other; 
seven times they went around the walls of Jericho before 
they fell; seven golden candlesticks stood on the table; 
seven letters to the seven churches in the Book of Kevela- 
tions; and altogether there are between five and six hun- 
dred statements in the Bible of the holy number seven. 

559 



560 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

The lesson which we have just heard this morning tells us 
of the seven loaves, and seven baskets of crumbs. In order- 
not to hold you too long on a warm day, I will at once call 
your attention to this beautiful theme, 

SEVEN LOAVES OF BREAD AND SEVEN BASKETS OP CRUMBS. 

I will give you first a basket of bread to take home, and 
then the crumbs, until you have each of you seven loaves 
of bread and seven baskets of crumbs. The first loaf which 
I would like to have you take home with you and keep as 
long as you live, is this: 

1. Let us sit at Jesus' feet 
If we have no bite to eat. 

A great many people think that going to church is all 
right, provided we have nothing else to do, but how many 
there are that take this Lord's Day as a day of special 
labor, and refuse to go to God's house to hear His blessed 
Word. I would call your attention to the fact that Jesus 
Christ had people who walked around the Sea of Galilee 
and stayed with Him for three long days, and not only 
did He know every man that came to listen to Him, but 
He knew exactly how far they came, for He states in our 
text that divers came from afar. He therefore knows every 
step you take when you go to God's house, and He also 
knows when you do not come to God's house. These peo- 
ple were with Him three long days, and if they had sim- 
ply resorted to reason they would have said on the second 
day: We must all go home, because we are just about 
running out of victuals, and we are out here in the desert 
where there is nothing to eat; but instead of doing this, 
they took this loaf: 

Let us sit at Jesus' feet 
If we have no bite to eat. 

And, for my part, I would love to have you all make up 
your minds to-day that the Lord God did not say, Kemem- 
ber the Sabbath day to keep it holy, once in a while; but 



SEVENTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. 561 

He did say, Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy as 
often as it comes, and your immortal souls need to be fed 
just as well as your bodies. It is hard enough, my dear 
friends, to see a person who cannot eat, but it is harder 
yet when people can eat, and will not. There is no danger 
of your sitting back and starving your bodies. You will 
have something to eat whether you can get it honestly or 
not, but you would starve your poor souls from one end of 
the month to the other, and not pay very much attention to 
them, whether they get any food at all. Oh, you cannot 
afford to starve your souls. Do take this loaf home and 
hold it: 

Let us sit at Jesus' feet 

If ice have no bite to eat. 

And inasmuch as there were just as many baskets of 
crumbs as there were loaves, I will give you the first bas- 
ket of crumbs : 

1. No less ivill you receive to eat 
Because you sit at Jesus 7 feet. 

Tliese people stayed and heard God's Word for three 
long days. Even before they had a chance to ask the ques- 
tion, Where will we get the next meal? Jesus began to put 
the question, and it w^as not very long until the seven loaves 
a*id the few small fishes were amply supplying the four 
thousand people, and they never ate a heartier meal than 
they did that day. So we find that 

No less will you receive to eat 
Because you sit at Jesus' feet. 

Yet it is just as true to-day as it was then. Go over the 
inhabitants of your own city of Mansfield, go from home 
to home, and point out to me the homes where the people 
hear God's Word every Sunday, and then show me the 
homes where they never hear God's Word, and let us de- 
cide which one has the most bread. I know whereof I 
speak. I do not believe there is another .man in this city 
who gets into more homes than I do, and every time there 

is a want of bread in the home, it is because there are 

76 



562 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

people in that home who are refusing to sit at Jesus' feet 
and eat of the bread of life. You cannot show me a sin- 
gle home on God's earth where the father and mother and 
the children are all true to Jesus Christ, that He lets them 
starve. Take this basket of crumbs home with you: 

No less will you receive to eat 
Because you sit at Jesus 7 feet. 

Now let me give you a second loaf to take along with 
you: 

2. Jesus Christ ivould be the last 
Not to care if ive should fast. 

The disciples were not the first ones to say, Where will 
we get some bread, and how shall we get something to 
eat? Before one complaint arises from the four thousand 
people, Jesus Himself is touched with compassion, and 
asks the question, Where will we get something to eat 
for these people? In other words, Jesus Christ is more 
concerned about our bread than we are ourselves. The 
little children are not asking the question in the home, 
Where are we going to get our next meal? They depend 
upon father and mother; but how often father and mother 
are asking the question, Where will we get clothing for 
our children, and bread for our children? and the children 
know nothing about the question in the mind of the par- 
ents; and I would like you to remember that the Lord 
your God is asking the question long before you ever think 
about it, Where is My son, and where is My daughter going 
to get their bread? 

If you will just keep this loaf you will never starve — 

Jesus Christ would be the last 
Not to care if we should fast. 

Right along with this second loaf, let me give you the 
second basket of crumbs: 

2. To run from Christ to get our bread 

Would strew the streets ivith sick and dead. 



SEVENTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. 563 

"I have compassion on the multitude, because they have 
now been with Me three days, and have nothing to eat; 
and if I send them away fasting to their houses, they will 
faint by the way; for divers of them came from far. 7 ' In 
other words, if any of these four thousand had left the Sa- 
vior, instead of getting bread they would have starved be- 
fore they reached home; they would have sunk down in the 
desert and would not have had the strength to go further. 
Their lives were saved by staying close to the Master. And 
it is time that every one take hold of this loaf in this com- 
munity : 

To run from Christ to get our oread 
Would streiv the streets with sick and dead. 

How many people there are to-day who are trying to im- 
agine that the Church is the place to feed the soul, but you 
have got to go somewhere else to have the body fed. The 
Savior who gave these people the Word of God for three 
days, is the same Savior that gave them the fish to eat 
and gave them their bread; and it is a mistaken idea in the 
ministry as well as among church members that we have 
to run some place else to take care of our families. I claim 
on the authority of God's eternal Word, that if a man is 
true to his God, and true to the Church, and true to his 
family, there is no call for belonging to anything else; and 
if you only knew it, that band that is going down to the 
depot this week is paid for by a whole lot of people that 
are going to pay seven dollars apiece this week to join the 
Camels, and you are the camels that are paying the bills; 
you are the camels that are running away from God to get 
your bread. I am not finding any special fault with these 
Camels, because I know nothing about them, except this: 
the man that is looking out for my family's interests, will 
not stand in my home begging for me to pay him seven dol- 
lars. The man that is running after you to get your money, 
is not after you because he wants you to get more bread; 
that man wants some bread himself, and the sooner we all 
learn this great lesson that God takes care of His chil- 
dren, the sooner you will stop paying rent and own your 
own homes. There are men in this city that are not at 






564 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 



home one night in the week; they are paying out money 
every week to help keep a lot of lazy rascals who do not 
want to work, and they will keep on j>aying rent until they 
die; and they will have to have somebody else pay their 
funeral expenses, because they did not stay with Christ and 
get their bread. Some people do not like this kind of talk, 
but it does not make any difference whether you like it 
or not, it is Scriptural; it is God's eternal Word, and the 
men that prosper are the men that take these loaves, and 
take these crumbs. Let me give you this second basket 
of crumbs once more: 

To run from Christ to get our bread 
Would streiv the streets with sick and dead. 

The third loaf: 

3. If to-day true faith you lack, 

Turn around — with shame look back. 

You will remember before the services I read the 6th chap- 
ter of John. There we discovered that at another time 
the Lord Jesus Christ fed five thousand people on five bar- 
ley loaves and two small fishes, and there were left twelve 
baskets full of crumbs. These same disciples to whom 
the Lord Jesus Christ is talking on this occasion saw that 
first miracle, and at the same time, when He put the ques- 
tion, How shall we get the bread for these people? those 
disciples had forgotten. Oh, they were just as we are to- 
day. As I look into your faces, I know, as well as I know 
anything, that you have been fed every day of your lives; 
you have had your three meals, provided you were well 
enough to eat them, ever since you were born; there never 
has been a day when God did not provide enough wheat 
that the people might have enough to eat; and yet, despite 
all this, the day comes when you say: Where will we get 
our bread? Looking forward you are wondering all the 
time how you are going to keep house, and how you are 
going to prosper in the coming year. Have you really be- 
lieved that God died? Can you not look back any more and 
see what He has done for you in the past? Tf He gave these 



SEVENTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. 565 

twelve baskets of crumbs in the past, can He not give us 
seven to-day? If He fed five thousand people a few months 
ago, on five barley loaves, can He not to-day feed four 
thousand people on seven loaves? 

If to-day true faith you lack, 

Turn around — tvith shame look back. 

Look back and remember the days that God has fed you 
when you did not even deserve it. Oh, He will care for 
you in the future. 

And now, with this basket of bread, take along another 
basket of crumbs: 

3. There is no better cure for care 

Than faithful, humble Christian prayer. 

The Lord Jesus Christ did not hand these loaves over to 
the people at once. He made the people sit down. To-day 
how many families there are that walk up to the table, 
turn up their plates and begin to eat, and never give 
thanks; and how many people there are, that even if they 
do give thanks, do just as I do — forget to give thanks after 
they have eaten. It is not right. When one time a man 
was eating in the presence of a great ruler in Europe, 
he got up with bread in his mouth and walked away from 
the table, and the ruler said, "Don't walk away with your 
bread in your mouth, like Judas and deny your Master." 
How many people even forget their prayers when they sit 
dowm to eat, and how few there are that thank God before 
they eat, and thank Him afterwards- If there is any one 
thing we ought to learn of our Savior, it is this, that we 
should pray every time we eat. It is not only said that 
He took bread and gave thanks, but that He took the bread, 
and gave thanks, and gave it to His disciples, and then 
took the fish, and gave thanks again. He would not even 
touch a little fish without thanking the Father in Heaven. 
Oh, what a rebuke to us. Jesus Christ could make bread, 
and yet gave thanks to God; you and I could not make a 
grain of wheat if we tried all the days of our lives, and yet 
we eat this wheat and never thank God at all. Take these 



56G THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

crumbs home with you, and do not come to church simply 
to go some place; do not come to church simply to hear 
another sermon. If it is right to thank God at the tabic, 
why, in the name of common sense, will you eat another 
meal and not thank God? Put to practice what you hear. 
Take your crumbs, and give thanks to God. 
I give you a fourth loaf to take along : 

4. God feeds all in this great land, 
Giving bread from hand to hand. 

After the Lord Jesus Christ had given thanks for this 
bread, He gave it to the disciples, and then said to them, 
Now you make the men sit down, and hand it to them ; and 
before the people got that bread, it passed through the hands 
of God, and through the hands of every disciple; and from 
this we learn the great lesson : 

God feeds all in this great land, 

Giving bread from hand to hand. 

I 
There is not one of us that is independent. We sometimes 

think we are. I am not, and you are not. We sometimes 
say the farmer is independent. I do not think he is. If 
you men did not make his threshing machines, and if you 
did not make his reapers, and his plows, and his harrows, 
how would he farm? The same Lord God who plows our 
hearts and souls to give us life, teaches the farmer to plow 
the crust of the earth, and take the teeth of the harrow and 
scratch the earth, in order that it may bring forth the 
harvest. That farmer is dependent upon the machanic. 
And what would the mechanic do if it were not for the 
farmer? How would you make this machinery if it were 
not for the farmer that raises the grain that gives you the 
strength to work? How would the minister of the Gos- 
pel live, if it were not that the people are willing to give 
of what they have labored and earned to help support him 
in his work? How would the President of the United 
States live if all the people did not make him their servant, 
and feed him? There is not, therefore, a single man on 
earth that does not live upon bread that is handed from 



SEVENTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. ~><>7 

hand to hand. This is a loaf that you had better take home 
with you. 

And with this loaf, take another basket of crumbs: 

4. No bite to cat on sea or land 

That has not been in God's right hand. 

Before that multitude got a bite of fish it had to go into 
God's hand; before that multitude got a single loaf, every 
loaf had to go into God's hand. You have eaten a meal 
to-day, but that meal was in God's hand before it ever 
reached you. There is not a fish in the sea that is not God's 
fish, and no wonder that He brought the fish out to the 
vessel when Peter cast his net. It was God's fish, and 
they obeyed His voice. So the Lord our God gives His 
blessing on every grain of wheat, every grain of corn 
planted. It is He, my friends, who is feeding the world, 
and it all passes through His munificent hand; and that 
is what the Psalmist said: "The eyes of all wait upon 
Thee, O Lord; and Thou givest them their meat in due 
season. Thou openest Thine liberal hand, and satisfiest the 
desire of every living thing." 

I give you a fifth loaf to take along: 

5. When the harvest seems so small, 
God gives us the best of all. 

In that lonely desert it looked as though the harvest, was 
very small, and yet the people had bread enough. What 
is there better, after all, than a good loaf of bread? And 
what is better, among all kinds of meat, than a good little 
fish? And these people had the fish and the bread out in 
the desert; and from this we pick up this beautiful loaf: 

When the harvest seems so small, 
fjfod gives us the best of all. 

What a beautiful harvest there is growing all around here 
in the land. Some people seem to think when it rains a 
little then there will be no harvest. Have you starved since 
it has been raining? Doesn't God know what He is doing 
with the weather? You talk about a bad day — you might 



568 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

just as well talk about a bad God. There never was a bad 
day; there never will be one, and Christians ought to stop 
striking at God by complaining of the weather. The har- 
vest is growing most beautifully, and though there may 
not be as much of one crop as there has been before, there 
will be more of the other. This morning we have a beau- 
tiful harvest. Oh, how small it seems to just come here 
and take a little pinch of bread, and a little bit of wine, 
and yet, my dear friends, it is the best feast that God ever 
gave to man; it is the feast of His body and His blood, 
given to us for the remission of sins. 

When the harvest seems so small, 
God (jives us the best of all. 

Take with you this fifth basket of crumbs: 

5. There is no better way to live 

Than all things to the Lord to give. 

They had seven loaves of bread and a few small fishes, 
but remember, before these disciples got one bite to eat, 
they had to put all their bread into the hands of the Lord. 
They had to give the few little fish still left into God's 
hands. Then, when they had done this, and it was handed 
back to them, they had to give to the people first, and 
they had to eat last; but they became no poorer, for after 
all was over and all had plenty, they had seven baskets 
full of crumbs. Dear friends, it sometimes seems as if to 
give to the Lord would make a man poorer. If I tell you 
that my income is one thousand dollars a year, and that 
I pay out fifteen hundred dollars a year, according to math- 
ematical rules, that could not be done, but, according to 
God's mathematics these things are done every day. We 
can mention men by name that honestly give more than 
they seemingly get, all by God's rich blessing. What the 
Lord says, He means. "Give, and it shall be given unto 
you, good measure, pressed down, shaken together and 
running over," but the reason the Christian Church is so 
poor in some places is because the people do not believe 
God. They do not believe this principle, that when you 



SEVENTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. 509 

give to the Lord it makes you rich, and when you retain 
from the Lord it makes you poor. What I said a while 
ago is demonstrated in this same fact. Who are the poor 
people in this city of Mansfield? The very people who are 
giving nothing to God. Every man has a master, and if 
Grod is not his Master the devil is, and the devil is a hard 
master, and if man does not give what God asks him to, 
the devil will make him give more. I have in mind a man 
who one time refused to give one hundred dollars to estab- 
lish a Christian school, because he said he could not afford 
it, and the very next week he gave thousands of dollars 
to a bunco man, and then he could afford it. He would 
not give one hundred dollars to God, but he gave thousands 
of dollars to the devil before five days. 
Take with you another loaf: 

6. 'Never yet did Jesus cease 
Bread and fishes to increase. 

The question might arise, Why not say something about the 
fishes? The reason I say very little about the fishes is be- 
cause they are mixed up with the bread and with the crumbs. 
When you want to make real good bread, you can put a 
little meat with it, and so we have the bread to-day, and 
the crumbs, and the fishes with it, and this loaf of bread 
is a good one: 

Never yet did Jesus cease 
Bread and fishes to increase. 

That day they only had seven loaves and a few small fishes, 
and yet, when the multitude was fed, they still had left of 
the fishes, still had left of the crumbs, seven baskets full. 
Wonderful miracle, was it not? And yet we have the same 
miracle over and over. You plant your wheat in the 
ground; it decays; and God raises up from that wheat a 
great harvest that is covering the land again. Who is doing 
this? Those fishes two thousand years ago were not the 
only fishes. The sea is full of them to-day; the lakes are 
full of them, and the rivers are full of them. On this very 
night there are more fish in the world than ever before. 
So all the time this loaf is a good one to keep hold of: 



570 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 



Never yet did Jesus cease 
Bread and fishes to increase. 



And right along with this I give you a good basket of 
crumbs : 

6. The day they say that you are dead, 

The world will eat God's fish and bread. 

You may be young to-da}', and you may say that in the 
future the fish will all die, or that in the future there will 
be no harvests any more; but remember, on the very day 
it is said of you, "He breathed his last," the world will still 
be eating bread, and there will still be fish in the market. 
Take this basket of crumbs home with you. 
I will give you the seventh loaf now: 

7. God in heaven is too poor, 

The crumbs to sweep out of the door. 

You would imagine some people are a great deal richer 
than God is. They have bread to throw away. It makes 
no difference to them if they do throw large pieces of bread 
out into the alley; it makes no difference whether their 
clothes are worn out or not, just so they are in style. After 
the Lord God, who made the bread, had fed the four thou- 
sand, His command was to pick up the crumbs; and when 
the crumbs were all picked up, there were seven baskets 
full — enough to feed four thousand more, and pick up 
seven baskets full of crumbs more, and feed four thousand 
more, and He has kept on feeding the multitude ever since. 
Did you ever stop to think that God in heaven is too poor, 
to sweep the crumbs out of the door? I will never forget 
some of our good old German mothers who tell us: it is a 
sin to throw bread from the table; a sin to sweep crumbs 
out into the yard; a sin to burn a little piece of bread. I 
actually believe my mother would have whipped me if I 
had ever burned a single crumb of bread. In those days 
it looked foolish, but O God, I thank Thee for a mother 
who had good sense; for a mother who had a Christian 
heart; for a mother who knew the secrets of life and how 
to appreciate the blessings of God. Do not find fault with 



SEVENTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. .)iL 

people who are saving. It is not over two weeks that a 
man said to me of another man, "I don't like him because 
he is so terribly stingy and close." I do not like to see a 
covetous man either, he is an idolater; but it only took 
about seven days to learn this great fact that the man who 
did not like that terribly stingy man had nothing to give 
for a great object, while the man he did not like because 
he was saving, had fifty dollars to give for that object. The 
reason some people never have anything to do any good 
kind act with, is because they do not know how to take care 
of the little crumbs. God does not let one thing go to 
waste. One of the most surprising lessons that I learned 
in philosophy was the indestructibility of matter. Before 
that lesson I always thought that when you burn wood, 
there is that much less matter in the world; I thought that 
when you threw a glass of water on the earth it was lost, 
but the truth of it is that God never lost anything. If the 
rays of the burning sun lift the water out of the ocean, 
God takes it, and freezes it, and puts it on top of the moun- 
tains, and brings it down to the desert, in the summer for 
the cattle to drink. Xot a leaf falls from a tree, but God 
takes it and feeds the roots, to produce other leaves the 
following year. Look at nature where you please, God 
never loses a drop of water, never destroys a single thing. 
Measured with all its surroundings, the world weighs to- 
day just what it did a thousand years ago. When will we 
poor, dependent beings learn of God to take care of the 
crumbs? 

With this loaf I will give you the last basket of crumbs 
to take home: 

7. So save the crumbs each day you live; 
For each good cause you then can give. 

The stingy man, the covetous man, is an idolater, but the 
man that saves, and saves for a purpose to give, his giving 
is pleasing to God. I have told you the story before, but it 
will not hurt to hear it again, how A. T. Stewart sent his 
servant out of his home because she burned the two ends 
of a match; she had no right to burn two ends of a match 
when matches were so dear, and when her father found 



572 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

fault with the great merchant for giving a large sum of 
money to the Church the next week, A. T. Stewart correctly 
replied, "If I had not saved the two ends of the match, 
I could not have given this large sum for this benevolent 
cause." Save the ends of the match, young man; save 
your pennies and your dollars, and stop giving them for 
uses that are detrimental instead of good, and give only 
for worthy causes, and the more you give, the more you live. 
May God bless these loaves and these baskets of crumbs 
to our temporal as well as our eternal good, is my prayer. 
Amen. 



EIGHTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. 



CONGREGATIONAL CONSCIENCE. 



Matt. 7:13-23. 



^^^VNTER ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad 
is flie way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which 
go in thereat ; because strait is the gate and narrow is the way, 
which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it. Beware of false 
prophets, which come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are 
ravening wolves. Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather 
grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles? Even so every good tree bringeth 
forth good fruit ; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit. A good 
tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth 
good fruit. Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, 
and cast into the fire. Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them. 
Not every one that saith unto Me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the king- 
dom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of My Father which is in 
heaven. Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophe- 
sied in Thy name? and in Thy name have cast out devils? and in Thy 
name done many wonderful works? And then will I profess unto them, 
I never knew you : depart from me, ye that work iniquity." 

Sanctify us, O Lord, through Thy Truth : 
Thy Word is Truth. Amen. 



Beloved in Christ: — 

The essential thing for you as individuals is this, not only 
that you have a conscience, but that conscience should be 
enlightened by the Word of God. Every heathen has a con- 
science, but conscience is not the same in a heathen as it is 
in an enlightened Christian, and if it is right that every 
individual Christian should have an enlightened conscience, 
it surely stands to reason that a congregation made up of 
individual Christians should also have an enlightened con- 
gregational conscience. The Sermon on the Mount is one 
of the best passages of Scripture to enlighten the conscience. 

57a 



574 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

The beatitudes show the wonderful blessings that God would 
love to give to humanity. Christians are pointed out to be 
the salt of the earth, and the light of the world, and this 
light is to grow brighter by the expounding and understand- 
ing of God's holy law, until Christ, the Light of the World, 
is found, and, having found Him, we are to go on further, 
and live a higher life, learning to love our enemies and to 
pray for them who despitefully use us, reaching a higher 
plane day by day, in the light of the great Light of the 
World. 

Then, furthermore, this Sermon on the Mount tells us 
how to give our alms, not to be seen of men ; to lay up treas- 
ures in heaven, not on earth ; to trust God as the birds of the 
air do, and to remember that the very flowers of the field are 
more beautiful than the garments of Solomon, created by the 
Hand that is governing your life and mine. And, last of all, 
as enlightened people, the Savior tells us not to sit in judg- 
ment upon others, but rather to go to God in prayer, asking, 
and we shall receive, seeking and we shall find, knocking 
and it shall be opened unto us ; but, for fear, having learned 
the way to heaven, we might lose it, we have finally a warn- 
ing given in the language of our text, showing us that con- 
gregations should have an enlightened conscience. I there- 
fore invite your attention this morning for a few moments to 

CONGREGATIONAL CONSCIENCE. 

I. How it is obtained. 
, II. How it is retained. 

I. How is this congregational conscience obtained? 
First, by having one faith; and by having that faith the 
right faith. 

1. We must have one faith, if we would have a congre- 
gational conscience. As an individual I cannot have one 
opinion this minute, and another the next, and be a safe 
guide to any man. If I am to be a real light in a community 
I must have my conscience enlightened, and have it so en- 
lightened that when I come to you to-morrow I can give you 
the same light I gave you to-day, and even more. How shall 



EIGHTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY, :/<•> 

we have a congregational conscience if one man believes this 
and another believes that? We must have one faith, and 
that one faith must be, first of all, in one Word; and then in 
one God; and then in one Confession. 

It must be in one Word. If a congregation is to have 
one conscience, it surely must believe in some text-book as 
the guide through life, let that book be what it pleases. We 
cannot have a congregational conscience if one man says the 
Bible is his guide and another man says the book of the 
Koran is his guide and another man says the Talmud is his 
guide. How shall we have a congregational conscience if 
we have not got one lamp to show us the way? 

That one lamp shows, furthermore, that we must have 
one God, if we wish to have congregational conscience. If 
one worship God the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, another 
worships an unknown God, and still another worships a 
known idolatrous god, how can we have one and the same 
conscience? 

One Word, one God, and one Confession. And when I 
say one Confession, I mean to say this, that you never can 
find congregational conscience in any crowd of people made 
up of different faiths. If a Methodist Church wants a con- 
gregational conscience, it has got to have Methodist mem- 
bers; if a Presbyterian Church wants a congregational con- 
science, it has got to have Presbyterian members ; if a Roman 
Catholic Church wants a congregational conscience, it has 
got to have Roman Catholic members; and if a Lutheran 
Church wants a congregational conscience, it has got to have 
a Lutheran faith. In other words, there cannot be three or 
four or five different kinds of faith in one organization, if it 
is to have a congregational conscience. 

2. If we are to have a congregational conscience, we 
must not only have one faith, but that one faith must be the 
right faith. It must be the faith of the one Word of God, 
called the Bible. The conscience of the Koran is not the 
conscience of the Christian. The conscience of the church 
that believes in the old part of the Bible, and in tradition, 
and in what is said on that great throne in Italy — if that is 
to be the conscience — then it will not fit in a Lutheran 
Church. I claim with, Christ in the Sermon on the Mount, 



576 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

that the Word that He has spoken shall not pass away 
though heaven and earth shall pass away; that in the Old 
Testament we have the prophets to whom Jesus Christ re- 
ferred the disciples when He said, "Search the Scriptures, 
for in them ye think ye have eternal life ; for, they are they 
which testify of Me;" that in the Evangelists we have the 
very words and teachings of Christ, the Son of God ; that in 
the Acts of the Apostles we have the works of the chosen 
inspired men; that in the Epistles we have the letters of 
these inspired men to the churches and to the world; and 
that in the last book, we^have the last revelation of God from 
heaven, the closing of which says that we are to add nothing 
to, and take nothing from, this Book; and this Old Testa- 
ment, and the New, is the One Word of God that we must 
believe if we are to have a congregational conscience. It is 
to this Word that Jesus refers in the last words of the Ser- 
mon on the Mount, when He says, "Therefore, whosoever 
heareth these sayings of Mine and doeth them, I will liken 
him unto a wise man which built his house upon a rock ; and 
the rain descended, and the floods come, and the winds blew, 
and beat upon that house, and it fell not, for it was founded 
upon a rock." There you get congregational conscience; 
but, on the other hand, "And every one that heareth these 
sayings of Mine, and doeth them not, shall be likened unto 
a foolish man which built his house upon the sand ; and the 
rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, 
and beat upon that house ; and it fell ; and great was the fall 
of it." Why? Because it was not based upon the true 
Word of God; they did not believe it. 

Not only must this congregational faith be in one Word 
of God, but it must be in the only- true God, the Father, Son 
and Holy Ghost. We have so many people in these days that 
seem to think it is all right to be a Jew, if you are only sin- 
cere. Dear friends, it makes no difference how sincere you 
are, if you are wrong you are wrong. Suppose I take it into 
my mind that I will take a knife and kill one of my children 
this afternoon to please God ; I may be sincere, but I am com- 
mitting murder nevertheless. A man that claims to wor- 
ship God the Father and rejects Jesus Christ, is rejecting 
God the Father, too, for he that will not accept the Son can- 



EIGHTH .SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. 571 

not accept the Father. Therefore, I say it becomes neces- 
sary for a Christian people to settle it once and forever that 
God is the Father, the Hon and the Holy Ghost, the same 
God that created man in His image; the same God whom the 
angels praised by saying three times, "Holy, Holy, Holy;" 
the same God that manifested Himself at the baptism of 
Jesns, the Son being in the water, the Father speaking from 
heaven, and the Holy Spirit coming down in the form of a 
dove; the same God that revealed His person wdien He said, 
"Go ye into all the world and make disciples of all nations, 
baptizing them in the name of the* Father, Son and Holy 
Ghost.' 7 Unless we believe in the Triune God, there never 
can be a congregational conscience. 

Not. only that, but I go further and say that that one 
faith that w 7 e spoke of a while ago should be the same faith 
that is confessed in the Lutheran catechism ; the same faith 
that is confessed in the Augsburg Confession, as printed in 
your hymn book ; the same faith more fully expressed in the 
Book of Concord ; accepted by the great Lutheran Church of 
the world. I do not say that other churches have no truth, 
but I do say there is no church on God's earth that has any 
truth that is not found in the Book of Concord ; and I w 7 ould 
say the Book of Concord will stand with the Bible, because 
it takes as its foundation this, that wdiat God has spoken is 
true, no difference what any man says to the contrary, that 
Word stands. Therefore, if we w 7 ish to have a congrega- 
tional conscience, w r e must believe in educating our children 
in the holy law ; w 7 e must believe in bringing our children to 
the house of God. If we had the congregational conscience 
w 7 e should have, not one of our children would be out of the 
church this morning. What is w 7 rong? Conscience is not 
enlightened. Conscience is still asleep. Congregational 
conscience must say to every child, This is the Sabbath day 
and God has said, Kemember it, and keep it holy — not only 
forty-five minutes in the morning, not only now and then a 
Sunday w 7 hen there is no place to visit, not only now 7 and 
then w 7 hen there is no excuse to stay at home ; congregational 
conscience says, God said, Remember the Sabbath Day to 
keep it holy — from the beginning to the end ; congregational 
conscience says, The little €hild must learn on its mother's 

.37 



578 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

knees to say, I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker 
of heaven and earth ; I believe in Jesus Christ, His only Son, 
our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the 
virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate; was crucified, 
dead and buried; He descended into hell; the third day He 
rose again from the dead ; He ascended into heaven, and sit- 
teth on the right hand of God the Father Almighty; from 
thence He shall come to judge the quick and the dead. I 
believe in the Holy Ghost, the Holy Christian Church, the 
communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrec- 
tion of the body, and the life everlasting. Amen. That little 
child must be taught to say that, and to keep on saying it, 
and when it is old it will not unsay what it said on its 
mother's knees; when it is old it will not go and make its 
childhood's life a lie. The reason that some children never 
believe the right thing is because conscience is in the hands 
of the devil too long. Congregational conscience must lead 
the people to prayer, and never let them know anything else. 
Just before the words of our text God says, "Ask, and it 
shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it 
shall be opened unto you : for every one that asketh receiv- 
eth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh 
it shall be opened. Or what man is there of you, whom if 
his son ask bread, will he give him a stone? Or if he ask a 
fish, will he give him a serpent? If ye, then, being evil, 
know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much 
more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things 
to them that ask Him?" There seems to be a kind of a no- 
tion among some people that no difference where children 
are born, who their parents are, when they get to the age of 
fifteen or twenty, some wonderful revolution takes place and 
makes something of them they never were before. My God, 
I thank Thee, that my children can be children of God from 
their infancy. If that child that was baptized this morning 
were to die this morning, who would say it does not go to 
heaven? If it can go to heaven this morning, what is the 
use to turn it around wrong and then bring it back right 
again? If that little child this morning baptized in the 
name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, can go to heaven 
now, keep it where it is and it will go to heaven. That must 



EIGHTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. 579 

be as plain as that daylight is daylight. Consequently, a 
Christian conscience, a congregational conscience, must once 
and forever give up the idea that our little children should 
be anything else than Christians. We want them children 
of God ; Ave want them to learn to pray the very minute they 
can say "papa" and "mamma;" then they can also say, 
"Abba, Father;" and I make the declaration this morning, 
before God and before you all, if I was not a Christian when 
I was six weeks old, I am none to-day ; and I thank God that 
it was not necessary to make any change at the age of four- 
teen or twenty, except when I go wrong every day, to come 
back to God again. Congregational conscience must teach 
children and all that God wants every man that is to go to 
heaven baptized, old and young, whether there is a river full 
of water or a tinful — "one faith, one baptism, one Lord" 
is the teaching of the Bible ; but that one faith is faith in the 
one God, the Father, Son and Holy Ghost ; that one Lord is 
God, my Master ; that one baptism is not in some river — if 
so, you and I never saw that one baptism ; that one baptism 
is not by the hand of one Baptist — if so, then nobody has 
been baptized that John the Baptist did not baptize; that 
one baptism is the baptism that John the Baptist proclaimed 
when he said, I baptize "with water," connected with the 
name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost. That is con- 
science enlightened in the congregation. 

And then we want also a conscience that will look upon 
the Lord's Supper as the literal Word of God proclaimed, 
and not change one thing in it. I have no time this morning 
to go into detail as to Confession, but am simply laying down 
the foundation stones this morning for enlightened congre- 
gational conscience. 

II. Having, then, one faith, and the right faith, the next 
step is to retain that conscience when we have it. How shall 
this be done? According to the words of our text there are 
just two ways of retaining congregational conscience. Be- 
ware of the wide way. Beware of the woolxj wolf. 

1. Beware of the wide way. "Enter ye in at the strait 
gate, for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth 
to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat; be- 
cause strait is the ^ate and narrow is the wav which leadeth 



580 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

unto life, and few there be that find it." There are, then, 
only two roads, and every one of you is on one of these roads 
this morning, either the narrow way that leads to heaven, or 
the broad way that leads to destruction. On which way are 
you? If you have the congregational conscience that you 
ought to have, you are on the narrow way ; but if you are on 
the narrow way, then what? How are you going to retain 
that conscience? 

By getting entirely off of the broad way. There are too 
many people in these days that would love to walk on the 
narrow way about forty-five minutes on Sunday morning, 
'and then for the other six days, and for the other twenty- 
three hours and fifteen minutes, they would like to walk 
on the broad way. Did you ever come to a fork in the road 
and try to walk on both roads at the same time? Can you 
do it? If you cannot even do that on two public roads, 
then how are you going to walk on one road that is broad 
and leads to hell, and the other narrow and leads to heaven? 
How are you going to walk on both at the same time? If, 
therefore, you wish to retain this conscience, you have got to 
make up your mind, not only to go on the narrow way, but 
stay off of the broad way, and stay off entirely. And that 
broad way is so broad that it may run through ever public 
amusement; into every home; through every church. A 
man can stand right behind this pulpit, where I am stand- 
ing, and be on the broad road. Such are the men who shall 
on the Judgment Day stand before God and say, "Lord, Lord, 
have we not prophesied in Thy name? and in Thy name have 
cast out devils? and in Thy name done many wonderful 
works? And then I will profess unto them, I never knew 
you." Yes, a man can stand right behind the pulpit, and 
stand on the broad way ; he can be right in the church coun- 
cil and be on the broad way; he can be before the altar in 
Holy Communion and be on the broad way; he can be bap- 
tized in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, and 
be on the broad way. 

Then the broad way is so broad that it runs right up to 
the narrow way. Let me prove it. There was Judas Isca- 
riot, he put his lips up to the lips of Jesus Christ. You all 
know the narrow way. Christ said, "I am the Way, the 



EIGHTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. 581 

Truth and the Life, no man cometh to the Father but by 
Me." You ask me, Why pray in the name of Christ? Because 
there is no other way, that is why. Why preach Christ only 
as the way to salvation? Because there is no other, that is 
why. Now mark what I tell you, Judas Iscariot put his 
lips right up to the lips of Jesus Christ; his lips touched the 
narrow way, and he was standing on the broad way, if ever 
a man on earth did. Do you notice, therefore, how close you 
can be to the narrow way? I can stand here this morning, 
and say Lord, Lord, and be standing on the broad way going 
to destruction. Therefore, you are not only to go to the 
narrow way; you are not only to touch the narrow way — 
you can take the hand of Jesus into your hand, you can put 
your lips to the lips of Jesus, and go down the broad path 
to destruction as Judas Iscariot did. Therefore, Jesus did 
not say simply, Look at Me, or Kiss Me, or Touch Me, but, 
"Enter ye in at the strait gate, because strait is the gate and 
narrow is the way which leadeth unto life, and few there be 
that find it. Those people that were drowned over there at 
New York a few weeks ago, some went right down beside the 
vessel; some went right down beside the tugs that came to 
lift them out. A man can drown a foot and a half away 
from a ship ; a man can go to hell within two inches of Jesus 
Christ. The thing to do to retain a congregational con- 
science is to get into Christ, put on Christ, and stay there. 
As many as have been baptized into Christ have put on 
Christ, and when you put Christ on, and keep Him on, then 
you are safe, and then you retain your individual conscience, 
and when every individual retains his Christian conscience 
we have congregational conscience. 

Not only must you put on Christ, but you must turn your 
back to the broad way, and keep your face heavenward. 
"Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and 
broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there 
be which go in thereat." The gate is as wide as sin. Did 
you ever see a road that had a gate wider than the road? 
Generally the gate is a little narrower than the road. The 
gate to the broad way is sin. When you are born in sin you 
go through the wide gate, and then you have the broad road 
of actual sin, while the gate is original sin, and the broad 



582 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

road gets broader and broader, and every time you break the 
Commandments wilfully you step down on this broad road ; 
and then, if you are on this broad way, you are going down, 
and the road leads you. You have noticed how much easier 
it is to walk down hill than up. When you go up hill you 
have to lead yourself, and when you are going down hill the 
road leads you. You can get upon the top of this hill at the 
Sherman property, put your feet on the coaster, and let the 
bicycle take you down to the park; and just so you can 
simply put your feet up, and fold your hands, and do noth- 
ing, and go sliding down to hell on the broad road; but the 
thing for you to do, to keep and retain congregational con- 
science, is to turn your face heavenward, get into the narrow 
way, follow Christ and Him crucified, and, following Him, 
say to the friends behind you, Follow me, for by following 
me you are following my Savior. 

2. Not only beware of the wide way, but beware of the 
wooly wolf. "Beware of false prophets, which come to you 
in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves. 
Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes 
of thorns, or figs of thistles? Even so every good tree bring- 
eth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil 
fruit. A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can 
a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit. Every tree that bring- 
eth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire. 
Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them." By their 
fruits ye shall know them. Oh, my dear friends, there are 
so many false prophets in the world that if you want to keep 
your congregational conscience, you have got to have an eye 
to the wooly wolf. Do not think for a single moment that 
you are perfectly safe to call any man that calls himself a 
preacher as your pastor. God only knows how long we are 
here in this world, and I say as Harms did: I do not 
know whether I will ever preach another sermon to you, 
but watch out when you call my successor, and see that you 
yourselves have a congregational conscience that will not 
allow a wooly wolf ever to stand where your faithful pastors 
have stood. 

Beware of the wooly wolf, for he has got the very marks 
of Satan on him. Beware of him, for he is Satan's monster: 



EIGHTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. 583 

he is Satan's missionary, and bears Satan's marks. I say 
lie is Satan's monster. Did you ever see thorns bear grapes? 
or thistles bearing figs? No. That would be a monster in 
nature. The great truth is that that sheep that would try 
to wear short hair would be a monster; but you never find a 
sheep trying that ; but, oh, how many w r olves there are that 
like to wear the wool. How many false prophets there are 
that like to dress like a preacher, wear the white cravat, 
even like to wear the robe, as if to say, Here stands a man 
of God. A robe does no harm if it has not got a wolfs heart 
inside; but no clothing, no sweet words, Lord, Lord, here, 
and Lord, Lord, there, makes a man a man of God. By 
their fruits ye shall know them. There is no other such 
monster on God's earth as a wooly wolf, and by their fruits 
ye shall know them. A lamb cannot howl like a wolf, and 
a wolf cannot bleat like a lamb. It is not such an easy 
thing to get rid of our nature. Why does the dog, when it 
lies down on the porch, turn around two or three times? 
Did you ever ask yourself the question? I will tell you why. 
The dog is on offspring of the wolf, and, thousands and thou- 
sands of years ago, when the wild wolf vent into the meadow 7 
to lie down in the deep grass, he kept turning and turning 
until he had a nest that fit him. The dog to-day has the 
wolf nature in him, and still turns around and around before 
he lies down. So the wooly wolf in the pulpit has still the 
wolfs howl; he is the wooly wolf, and can never enter 
heaven ; and God will say to him on that day, "I never knew 
you; I will have no such wolves in heaven." No such an- 
other monster on earth; you cannot find it in nature; you 
cannot find grapes growing on thorns, nor figs on thistles. 
Why should a man that acts like a wolf have on him the 
sheep's garment? He is a monster. There is nothing in 
hell like him. So God will say to those false prophets on 
the Judgment Day, "Depart from Me, ye that w 7 ork iniquity." 
He cannot wear that wool in hell ; it will soon be singed off. 
The wooly wolf is the worst man in the world. Do not tell 
me that the infidel is the worst man. An open infidel is not 
half so bad as the wolf in sheep's clothing; not half so bad 
a man as the false prophet; he does not deceive so many 
people. 



581 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

I say that this false prophet is also Satan's missionary. 
He deceives the people; he deceives himself, but cannot de- 
ceive God. And how is it possible for people to be deceived 
by this wooly wolf? I will tell you how. If you were to 
show me a child to-day raised inside of the house, who never 
saw a thistle and never saw a thorn or a fig or a grape, I 
will take that child out into the yard and show it some 
thistles with grapes tied to them, and some thorns with 
figs, and that child would not know but what that is all 
right. The reason you and I cannot be deceived is because 
we know what thorns are, and we know what thistles are, 
and we know what grapes and figs are, but the man that 
does not know what grapes and figs are, and doesn't know 
what thorns and thistles are, can be deceived very well by 
just tying grapes and figs on thorns and thistles. That is 
just the way some people can be deceived when a man stands 
up and says, Lord, Lord, here and there, and looks wise, does 
wonderful things that look like good works. Thousands of 
people do not know the difference between true doctrine and 
false; thousands of people do not know the difference be- 
tween truth and error; consequently they are deceived be- 
cause of ignorance. What you need is an enlightened con- 
science, a congregational conscience, that no man can 
deceive. I want a church council in this church, and some 
fathers and mothers in this church, that if a man preaches 
what is not the truth they will call a congregational meeting 
at once and settle the question. If any one in this house 
to-day believes that I do not preach the truth as it is in 
God's Word, it is your duty to report me to the council, and 
at once see who is right and who is wrong. That is congre- 
gational conscience. We are told in God's Word that a 
man can tell a lie until he believes it himself, and that surely 
is true of false prophets, for it is said on the Judgment Day 
they will say, "Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Thy 
name? and in Thy name have cast out devils? and in Thy 
name done many wonderful works? And then I will pro- 
fess unto them, I never knew you." Oh, what a word that 
must be on the Judgment Day to the wooly wolf. "I never 
knew you as My prophet." They have deceived themselves, 
but they cannot deceive God, for He says, "You need not 



EIGHTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. 585 

think because you deceived yourself and many people, and 
are the means of bringing them all to destruction, that 1 do 
not know you. Depart from Me, ye that work iniquity. I 
can see the wolf heart in you. Do not think for a single 
moment, O false prophet, O wooly wolf, that I cannot see the 
wolf inside of that fleece of wool." 

He bears the very marks of Satan. What are the three 
marks of Satan? No truth; no humility, and no call. 

Just so it is with the false prophet. He cannot tell the 
truth. Christ said of Satan that he abode not in the truth, 
and that he was a liar from the beginning ! Thus the wooly 
wolf would rather teach error — false doctrines — than the 
truth. By their fruits ye shall know them. Paul, in writ- 
ing to Timothy, told him to beware lest he should be lifted 
up with pride and fall into the condemnation of Satan. 
There you see another mark of Satan — pride. It was pride 
that made the first angel fall and become a devil ; it is pride 
you can look for in the wooly wolf. He walks on the street 
as if he were a thousand times better than any one else ; he 
thinks it would be far below him to take hold of the shovel 
and shovel a little ground; he thinks it would be far below 
him to shake hands with a poor, fallen man; he thinks it 
would be far below him to go down and help the poor and 
needy. Oh, beware of this wooly wolf, full of pride. 

Not only is he full of error and pride, but he comes with- 
out a call. The Lord God said, in the days of Jeremiah, "I 
have not sent these prophets, and yet they ran." Whenever 
you can show me a professed man of God not satisfied with 
his ministry where God put him, and is constantly writing 
letters to get a new place, you can make up your mind there 
is some wolf within that wool. Whenever God wants me, 
He knows where I am. Whenever God wants me, He knows 
where to find me. The wooly wolf runs when he has no call. 
The comfort of the man of God is, God placed me here ; what- 
ever comes I am willing to bear it for. Christ's sake. There 
you have the true shepherd, but the wooly wolf flees when he 
sees the wolf coming, and consequently has no peace of con- 
science, and is no true guide. 

God bless the church that has a true servant of God. It 
would not be the thing for me to say that your church has 



586 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

got one, but I pray God that your congregation may always 
have faithful ministers, faithful to the Word, faithful to the 
saving truth. 

On the other hand, I cannot imagine a church more to be 
pitied than the one where the people come to the house of 
God to get wheat, and get chaff ; Avhere they come to get their 
souls fed on God's eternal truth, and their souls are starved. 
What we want, therefore, is a Christian congregation, with 
a Christian conscience, and Christian ministers, faithful to 
their God, and so to preach and so to live, as they would 
wish to have preached, and wish to have lived on that great 
Judgment Day. In the army of Alexander the Great, there 
was one man who himself bore the name of the great Gen- 
eral ; and it was reported to the General that this man Alex- 
ander was a bad man. The great General called the soldier 
before him, face to face : "You are accused of a great crime. 
Are you guilty, or are you not?" "Your Honor, I am 
guilty." "What is your name?" "My name is Alexander." 
"Then," said Alexander the Great," "change your name, or 
change your character." It seems to me as I stand here this 
morning, I can almost see heaven open, and a voice coming 
out from the very throne of God, calling to every minister of 
the Gospel, and to every Christian congregation on earth, 
"Change your name, or change your character!" Amen. 

PRAYER. 

O God, our Heavenly Father, we thank Thee for Thy beloved Son,. 
Jesus Christ, who became flesh and dwelt among us, so that the Eternal 
Word incarnate was permitted to die for us, and to preach the wonder- 
ful sermon from which we have taken our text to-day ; and we thank 
Thee, O God, that in this Word we have that which enlightens the con- 
science of individual Christians, and of Christian congregations. We ask 
Thy divine blessing upon this house of God this morning, and Thy king- 
dom on earth. We pray Thee, Heavenly Father, that Thou wilt give us 
one faith, and the one Word, in the one true God, and that this faith may 
be one in confession. We pray Thee, O God, that Thou wilt enlighten 
us that we may retain the faith which Thou hast given us in the enlightened 
conscience. O, help us to beware of the wide way and the wooly wolf; 
and therefore help us to go on the narrow way, and to be led by Thy 
Holy Spirit day by day. Do Thou safely lead us throughout the day, 
and the coming week, and the remainder of our lives ; and those who 
are not with us to-day, and who should be, O God, go after them with 
Thy loving kindness, and with Thy Providential Hand lead them to this 



EIGHTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. 587 

Word which brings Thy truth and grace to them. Help, Heavenly Father, 
that not one may pass out of this world of darkness, without having found 
the light as it is in Jesus Christ, the Light of the world. Help us to 
hold fast to that wonderful promise, "He that believeth and is baptized, 
shall be saved;" and let us not forget the warning, "He that believeth not 
shall be damned." Hear that prayer, O God, which we pray Thee to make 
ours, while we say Thine own words: 

Our Father, who art in heaven : Hallowed be Thy name ; Thy king- 
dom come ; Thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven. Give us, this 
day, our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those 
who trespass against us. Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from 
evil ; for Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever 
and ever. Amen. 



NINTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. 



THOSE DIRTY DOLLARS. 



Luke 16:1-9. 



: fl 



O. \ Jj[ ND He said also unto His disciples, There was a certain rich man, 
who had a steward ; and the same was accused unto him that he 
had wasted his goods. And he called him, and said unto him, 
How is it that I hear this of thee ? give an account of thy stewardship ; 
for thou mayest be no longer steward. Then the steward said within him- 
self, What shall I do? for my lord taketh away from me the stewardship: 
I cannot dig; to beg I am ashamed. I am resolved what to do, that, when 
I am put out of the stewardship, they may receive me into their houses. 
So he called every one of his lord's debtors unto him, and said unto the 
first, How much owest thou unto my lord? And he said, An hundred 
measures of oil. And he said unto him, Take thy bill, and sit down quickly, 
and write fifty. Then said he to another, And how much owest thou ? 
And he said, An hundred measures of wheat. And he said unto him, Take 
thy bill and write fourscore. And the lord commended the unjust steward 
because he had done wisely : for the children of this world are in their 
generation wiser than the children of light. And I say unto you, Make to 
yourselves friends of the mammon of unrighteousness ; that, when ye fail, 
they may receive you into everlasting habitations. 

Sanctify us, O Lord, through Thy Truth : 
Thy Word is Truth. Amen. 



Dear Christian Friends : — 

We have before us this morning as hard a text as is to be 
found in the Bible. It has been misunderstood by smooth 
scoundrels; it has been misunderstood by good humble 
Christians ; and it has been greatly misunderstood even by 
many ministers of the Gospel. 

Many a smooth scoundrel has tried to misunderstand 
this Scripture lesson for his own rascality. It is said 
here in one verse: "And the lord commended the unjust 

588 



NINTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. 589 

steward, because he had done wisely." Many a scoundrel 
after having done his mean tricks has tried to make him- 
self believe that on the great Judgment Day God would 
commend him because he was smart, and he always refers 
to this lessen to prove it. 

This lesson has given a great deal of trouble to many 
an humble Christian. Many a Christian has said, If Jesus 
Christ is that kind of a Lord, that will commend the unjust 
steward, then He cannot be my Savior, for my Savior is 
a sinless Savior, a perfect Savior. The great trouble with 
these people is that they make no distinction between the 
Lord Jesus Christ, and the lord of the unjust steward. 
The Lord Jesus Christ never did commend this scoundrel, 
but it was his own lord on earth that did that. 

It has given a great deal of trouble even to ministers 
of the Gospel. There are problems in this parable, if it 
be a parable, which are hard to solve. Suppose we take 
it for granted that this rich man was God, and that the 
unjust steward is the man that must give an account to 
God of his stedardship, the problem still arises, how could 
God commend the unjust steward for his rascality? The 
problem is not so hard to solve if we simply remember the 
connection in which we have this Scripture. In the be- 
ginning of the former chapter we read of the publicans 
and sinners coming to the Lord Jesus to hear His words; 
the Pharisees and scribes murmured because Jesus sat 
down with sinners, and ate with them. The publicans, as 
you are aware, were a set of men who collected the taxes, 
and stole what they could of them, and consequently 
were looked upon as scoundrels and rascals of the commu- 
nity. The Pharisees and scribes thought it ought to be 
beneath the Son of God to sit down and eat with them; 
in reply Jesus gives the beautiful parable of the lost sheep 
and the lost piece of silver, and the parable of the prodigal 
son, and finally comes to this parable of the unjust stew- 
ard. All we need to remember in this connection is that 
the publican, as stated before, was a thief, as a rule; took 
money that did not belong to him; consequently handled 
the filthy lucre. When the young prodigal came home 
and the feast was made for him, the elder brother com- 



590 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

plained to the father, and said, I have labored here all my 
life, and you have never killed the fatted calf for me; 
never made a feast for me, but here comes this prodigal 
brother back home, the boy that wasted your living on 
harlots, handing the filthy lucre over to bad women; and 
then the Lord Jesus has a problem before Him, and that is 
this, What shall be done with this filthy lucre in the hands 
of the publican that becomes Christian? What shall be done 
with this money, called filthy lucre, which is the filthiest 
thing on earth, in the hands of people who become children 
of God. When you talk about filth, there is nothing fil- 
thier on God's earth than money — even the very money 
that is laid on this altar now has been passing through 
the filthiest hands and the filthiest business in all the 
world. Who knows where these nickels and dimes and 
dollars came from? Who knows where they were used a 
week ago? No wonder Paul wrote to one of his disciples 
and called it "filthy lucre." If you will just simply take 
this filthy lucre and call it by a name not very elegant, but 
true to the Scriptures, you will have my subject — 

THOSE DIRTY DOLLARS. 

May God help us to see: 

I. How the world makes them; 

II. How the world is taught to steal them; 

III. How Christians should handle them. 

I. How the world runs after this dollar, and works 
for it. "And He said also unto His disciples, there was a 
certain rich man, which had a steward;" We are not told 
how he became rich, but undoubtedly he had much money 
for which he worked hard. Let us notice just a few mo- 
ments how the world runs after the dirty dollar: 

1. Men travel all over the world, after it. There is not 
a bad thing in the world that God does not overrule for 
good. The desire to worship money is idolatry, and yet 
God has used that desire in order to discover the different 
parts of the world. I heard the president of the State 
University state one day that he was glad that jealousy 



NINTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. 591 

was iu the world, for if there were no jealousy, one man 
would not build a better building than the other had. (Sod 
even makes use of jealousy for the upbuilding of cities, and 
God makes use of the bad desire man has for the dirty dol- 
lar, to make him run up to Klondyke, and walk over to 
California, and cross the seas, until every country of God's 
earth has been discovered. Did you ever stop to think that 
the desire for the dirty dollar has discovered nearly every 
land on the globe? Men travel after it. 

2. Men dig for it. Have you ever been down in the 
dirty, dusty coal mine, under the ground? Have you ever 
asked yourself the question, Why is it that thousands and 
thousands of people would rather go down into these dirty 
black mines and work there under a little roof, with the 
surface of the earth over them, ready to fall down and 
crush them any hour — than to work in the fresh air? 
Why are they there? Not because men would rather work 
down there than up on top of the ground, but they get 
more dirty dollars for doing it. Oh, men will dig in mines 
of all kinds to get more dirty dollars. 

3. Not only will they dig for it, but they will ivork 
and sweat for it on the farms and in the factories. A man 
has eighty acres of ground, and he makes up his mind that 
when the fences are all built and the buildings are com- 
pleted, he will sit down and take life easy, and be happy; 
but no sooner has he the eighty acre farm in shape than 
he wants the next eighty, and when he has the next eighty 
in shape he wants the next one hundred and sixty; he 
works on, and the more fences he has to build, and the 
more men he has got to look after, and the more taxes he 
has to pay, the less time he has to sleep; and he is sweat- 
ing and working — Why? Because he is after the dirty 
dollar. 

Men will pull off their garments and work in the fac- 
tories very hard, and we commend them for their labor, 
but, oh, when you ask them the question whether they are 
working because they want to work, the answer will come 
back, when it comes honestly, After all I am working here 
for the dirty dollar. 



592 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

4. And not only is this true of working and sweating 
on the surface of the earth, but it is just as true of strikes. 
We are living in a country where one lot of employes after 
the other is striking for higher wages. Just now the ques- 
tion arises whether these large packing houses in our 
larger cities shall stop running or not. A man who will 
spend a day in One of those large packing houses cannot 
but notice what a grand institution it is, that furnishes 
us the steak we lay on our plates day after day. Men 
there, I understand, are getting good wages, but they are 
not satisfied with what they are getting; they are striking 
for more — more what? More dirty dollars. A few years 
ago the brick layers told me in Columbus that if they could 
get fifty cents an hour they would never want more; they 
got fifty, and they struck for fifty-five; they got fifty-five, 
and they struck for sixty ; they got sixty cents an hour, and 
they will keep on striking just as long as they can get an- 
other dirty dollar. We learn here the spirit of the unjust 
steward and the rich man. 

II. Not only do we learn here how the world works 
for this dirty dollar, but we learn from this parable or 
Scripture lesson how the world is educated to steal it. 

1. The very foundation of stealing the dirty dollar lies 
in this, that secular education is placed above Christian 
education. After the rich man had been robbed of every 
dollar of his money, or at least the most of it; after the 
unjust steward had run through with the greater part, and 
at last had provided a home for himself by having other 
men to become scoundrels with him, the rich man came 
home and met this steward face to face and said, "I will 
admit that you have beaten me badly; I will admit that 
you have run through with most of my possessions, but I 
will give you credit for being a wise scoundrel." "And 
the lord commended the unjust steward because he had 
done wisely ; for the children of this world are in their gen- 
eration wiser than the children of light." Ninety per cent 
of all Christians quote these last two lines as being the 
words of Jesus Christ, but they are not. Christ does not 
begin to speak until in the next verse: "And I say unto 



NINTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. 593 

yon, Make to yourselves friends of the mammon of un- 
Fighteousness; that, when ye fail, they may receive you 
into everlasting habitations." The lord that commended 
the unjust steward, the lord that said, The children of this 
world are in their generation wiser than the children of 
light, was the rich man himself, the lord of the unjust 
steward; and when he said that, he meant to find fault 
with the stupid Christian. How often the Christian is 
called stupid just because he will not enter into the 
schemes that some men will. If a man finds a dollar and 
does not keep it, he is called a stupid Christian; if a man 
does not go on and make all he can, even though he does 
commit this little sin or that little sin, he is always called 
stupid; and the people in this world who think they are 
so much smarter than the preacher, and so much smarter 
than the professed Christian, walk with their heads 
high, as if to say, We wonder how it can be in this 
enlightened age that a man will still be a member of 
a Christian Church; and that is the kind of a lord that 
this unjust steward had; and what does it mean? Simply 
this, that we are placing secular education above Chris- 
tian education, and consequently are educating a world of 
thieves. When I read this lesson of the unjust steward 
over carefully, and then think of the graduates we have in 
the penitentiaries all over this country, it makes me think 
that Jesus Christ was in Columbus when He gave this 
chapter; it makes me think this Book was written in 
America, and that the unjust steward was a graduate of a 
State University. Oh, how many people there are these 
days that have their diplomas, who have gone through the 
secular schools of this country, who do not know the Ten 
Commandments; who do not know the Apostles' Creed; 
who do not know the Lord's prayer; who do not know the 
teachings of Holy Baptism; who do not know at all what 
God said about the Lord's Supper; who do not know at all 
what a man is in the world for, or of the Judgment to 
come, or of his eternal destiny. And is it not a fact that 
the public school system of to-day is demanding all the 
time of our children? I am not an opponent of the public 
school system, but I am an opponent of robbing our chil- 



594 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

dren of every hour that they ought to give to the home, 
and to the Church, and to the learning of other things 
besides books. Our own country to-day is full of graduates 
who would have to say, as this unjust steward did, "I cannot 
dig, and to beg I am ashamed; what shall I do?" There 
are men by the hundreds in our graduating classes to-day 
who will tell you about the wonderful things they have 
learned, but if you take them into a barn and show them a 
box and ask them how much oats it will hold they cannot 
figure it out to save them. What I would like to see is a 
little more time for Christian education; a little more time 
for manual labor; a little more time for the judgment of 
common sense, which is learned in shops and in working 
fields by the young people. Where are the great men of the 
present day coming from? Are they coming from our cities? 
Are they coming from places where they go to school all 
their days? No, they are coming from the farms, where they 
have to work nine months in the year, and go to school a few 
months and learn more in those few months of the common 
branches and the things that develop man than the many 
things we are touching upon these days, and mastering noth- 
ing. The world to-day is saying just what •the lord of this 
unjust man said, that the children of this world are wiser 
in their generation than the children of light. I tell you 
it is not true, and God never said so, and it is time Chris- 
tians stop quoting Christ as saying it. He did not say it. 
Solomon said a wiser thing. He said, "The fear of God is 
the beginning of wisdom;" and a man may have ever so 
much wisdom, if he has not got the fear of God in his heart 
he is simply an educated scoundrel, and a dangerous man in 
any community, the first step toward teaching the world to 
steal these dirty dollars. /This unjust steward was not a 
common, ordinary man, but a gifted man, highly educated; 
he was a bookkeeper ; he was a man that was doing his lord's 
business ; he was the chief clerk. 

2. Another thing, however, we find in this unjust stew- 
ard — he was a man who wanted the very highest wages for 
the least amount of work. He did not work very hard, or he 
would not have said, "I cannot dig, and to beg I am 
ashamed." He was one of these smart young men who 



NINTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. 595 

would not work for a little money. When I tell young peo- 
ple in the present day that I worked for three years for one 
hundred and fifty dollars, they think 1 was a foolish boy. I 
am glad I did work three years for one hundred and fifty 
dollars. When you have a young man come to you avIio is 
only able to carry a saw and a hammer and wants the highest 
wages, you can make up your mind he will never amount to 
anything; but we are living in a time when, just like the 
unjust steward, every man wants to get the highest wages 
for the fewest hours possible. I am watching these things; 
I am not walking on the streets blind. When the clock 
strikes twelve, some men would not throw another shovelful 
if they were not paid more for it; waiting for the very mo- 
ment when to begin, and closing in good time, so that not one 
shovelful too much is thrown. Whenever a man is afraid 
to work five minutes too long, whenever a man is wanting 
the highest wages for the smallest amount of work, you can 
make up your mind he is educating himself to steal the dirty 
dollar. 

2. The third step in this education consists in living 
beyond one's means. How did the unjust steward begin to 
rob his master? We are not told here, but we can easily 
guess. He would not occupy that high position without 
wearing the very best of clothes. It does take a very large 
salary to clothe our young people in the present day. How 
many people there are who are wearing more clothing than 
they earn; and just as soon as that is being done, you can 
make up your mind that somebody is going to be robbed of 
some dirty dollars. Then, when a young man begins to wear 
fine clothing, he begins to go out into company, and then 
there are some drinks to pay for ; not only drinks to pay for, 
there are trips to take, amusements to be given. There are 
people who would not give a dollar for the spreading of 
God's kingdom, but they would spend five dollars to go to 
Cincinnati and be an Elk. I would rather be a man than an 
Elk. There are people who would not give one dollar for 
the extension of God's kingdom, who would invite a hundred 
people to sit down at their table and eat more than they can 
pay for. They are stealing the dirty dollars. Ask ourselves 
the question again, How did this young man get to be a thief? 



596 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

He lived beyond his means, and it was not long until he was 
taking a quarter, or a dollar, from his master, and said he 
would put it back; then he went on to "say, If I can take a 
dollar and put it back, I can take five dollars and put it back. 
His first intention was to be honest. Every young thief 
starts out with the intention of being honest, but it is not 
long until you discover that you have been a thief long before 
you knew it. The time came when five dollars would not 
reach ; at last he made up his mind, Well, I will be discovered 
any way, I might just as well take much as little, for when 
1 am reported to the master for stealing I will have to go ; I 
will call for his debtors. He called for the first, and said, 
"Look here, how much do you owe my master?'' He said 
he owed him a hundred measures of oil, or about a thousand 
gallons. "Sit down quickly, and we will make an arrange- 
ment by which you only pay fifty. Get out now, and the 
next one come in." "How much do you owe my master?" 
"An hundred measures of wheat" — about fourteen hundred 
bushels. "Sit down, and make it eighty measures of wheat ; 
make it just four score" — and thus he went on, and robbed 
his master all he possibly could in the last hour, and there 
he stood, the unjust steward, printed in history to be 
preached and read about long after he is dead and buried. 
So you will notice how it is that a man is educated to become 
a thief. 

4. And then, last of all, he is commended because of his 
great thievery. Notice that this man was commended by the 
same lord that was cheated. How did that come to pass? 
This same rich man most probably had been a scoundrel him- 
self. One thing is sure, he is not the Lord God, as so many 
preachers say. The Lord God never commended an unjust 
steward. One thing, this lord was himself a worldly man, 
or he would not have commended another worldly man. His 
argument is, I know that this unjust steward has robbed me ; 
I know he has beaten me; but one thing I will give him 
credit for, he was a smart, smart thief. "For the children 
of this world are in their generation wiser than the children 
of light." That very declaration of this lord made other 
thieves in the same community. It is so to-day yet. If a 
man steals a ham of meat he is put in the penitentiary; if he 



NINTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. 59T 

steals ten or twenty thousand dollars, he rides up and down 
street with the tinest team, and a fine driver, and everybody 
says, "There is a smart man/' and it is this thing of praising 
the big thief that is making the young man to-day dissat- 
isfied with working hard for every dollar; it is this that is 
making him go by leaps and jumps from nickels and dollars 
to large sums of money. Do not ask, Why is this country so 
full of thieves? We have educated them right along the line 
of the unjust steward. 

III. The last proposition I bring before you this morning 
is, How shall we Christians handle the dirty dollar? for 
handle it we must ; the Christian must live ; the Christian 
must purchase; the Christian must handle the filthy lucre. 
How shall he do it? 

1. He shall ivork hard for it. I believe that every dol- 
lar that a man works hard for is a blessing in his hands. 
We are taught in the very first book of the Bible to earn our 
bread with the sweat of our faces, and it is the only way to 
get the honest dollar to-day. True it is that some men get 
their thousands of dollars without sweating very much, but 
they make somebody else sweat. It becomes the duty of 
every honest man to sweat for his dollar, to work hard for 
it, and then he will know T what it is worth. 

2. His second duty is to pay it out quickly and pay off 
his debts. The best advice I can give to a young man, w T hen 
he receives a dollar is to ask himself the question, Have I 
any debts? and, if he has, to pay that debt first. That is the 
way for the Christian to handle the dirty dollar — get rid of 
it just as fast as you can, to pay debts. I am not speaking 
to individuals now, but to a Christian congregation. There 
may be a man here who has more debts than he honestly 
believes he can pay. What is his duty? I claim there is no 
reason under heaven for any man to die a dishonest man. 
If I had more debts than I saw my w r ay to pay, or more than 
I knew, I would put a notice in the paper to-morrow that 
any man to whom I owe money shall come to me with his 
bill ; and I would w r ant to know to the dollar and to the cent 
what I owe, for the first thing. Having summed the w-hole 
amount up, I would say, Now, then, the next thing to do is 
to see whether I can ever pay for it. If I cannot, I call a 



598 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

meeting of my creditors ; I would say to my creditors, There 
are more debts there than I could pay if I should get to be 
ten years older than the average life. What shall I do? I 
want to be an honest man; I want to pay my debts; if you 
will cut down those debts part way, I will borrow the money, 
with your help, and pay you all off; and I will go to my 
home, and I will say, Wife and children, no difference if we 
have got to go barefooted; no difference if we have got to 
wear our old clothing ; we are going to live within our means, 
and save a little every day, and pay off those debts. And if 
a man would take that stand, there is enough love in every 
community, and enough sympathy, to help every man out of 
debt, and be an honest man. What right has a man to walk 
on the streets of Mansfield, and owe every man he meets? 
What right has he to eat the bread that belongs to others? 
What right has a man to spend fifteen hundred a year if he 
earns only six hundred? The second duty of a Christian in 
handling the dirty dollar is to get rid of it as fast as he gets 
it, until all his debts are paid. Then what? 

3. The next thing is to make up his mind that from now 
on he will spend less than he makes. It is the only way to 
live. Do not think for a single moment that the world is so 
shallow that it cannot see through rascality. You may think 
you can appear rich when you are not, but the world knows 
better. The thing to do is to be honest and upright, and 
say, I am poor, and I am going to live within my income 
from now on, no difference how little it is, if I have to eat 
nothing but rice. The man that ran down street with a 
loaf of bread at Wittenberg, saying, "I stole because I must 
live," was stopped by Dr. Luther, and held as in a vise, and 
the old Eef ormer said, a Take the bread back — you have got 
to die." This thing of robbing and stealing because we have 
got to live is only a hell-forged lie. We have got to be hon- 
est, because we have got to die; and what right any man 
has to walk around on God's earth as a thief I do not 
understand. 

4. And the last thing for Christians to do in handling 
the dirty dollar is so to use it that it will be clean on the 
Judgment Day. Christ speaks only in one verse of our 
text : "And I say unto you, Make to yourselves friends of 



NINTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. 599 

{he mammon of unrighteousness; that, when ye fail, they 
may receive you into everlasting habitations." "I say unto 
you/' says God, "use your dirty dollars in such a way that 
you will have friends on the Judgment Day." That is the 
application of the unjust steward. Therefore, let us do good 
everywhere. If there is a poor sick one that needs help, let 
us help. Do not forget the poor-box out here. We are now 
supporting a nurse for one of our sick members, and we need 
your help; we need the dirty dollars; and when we have 
helped to take care of the poor and needy, not because they 
paid for it in advance, but because they could not pay for it 
in advance, and now need help, then, on the Judgment Day 
they will stand there and say, "You are a member of the 
First Lutheran Church; you helped me with that dirty dol- 
lar, and here we are," and God will say, "You have made 
friends with the unrighteous mammon;" and another one 
will stand up and say, "You gave me street car fare, when 
I would have had to walk — you made a friend of me that 
day ; you lifted me up when I was down — you made me a 
friend that day ; I was hungry and you gave me bread — you 
made a friend of me that day." Brethren, all our preaching 
and talking amounts to absolutely nothing until we have 
reached that point in Christianity that we pay no attention 
to this or that clique, but simply go to a man because he is 
a man, help him when he needs help, and when he does not 
need help don't help him, and then you will make friends 
for the Judgment Day. And, after all, that is the only 
kind of friends you will need to make. What do I care what 
you think about me? Nothing. What do I care whether 
you agree with me or not? I want to so live and so preach 
that on that last great day you will not be ashamed of me ; I 
want to so live and so preach that on that last great day 
God will say, "He told you the truth, and the things that he 
told you were for your eternal good." 

We can learn in conclusion from our enemies, and from 
rascals, and the Lord Jesus Christ points out three great les- 
sons here that we can learn from the unjust steward, even as 
children of light. 

1. Notice how quick this unjust steward was to discern 
his condition. He did not stop and argue, and say, "Give 



GOO THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

me another chance for a year, and I will do better ;" he saw 
his time was up; he saw his situation. Oh, that every man 
in the world would see his situation as quickly as the unjust 
steward did. There are men to-night who have to give an 
account to God on the last great day, and they know they 
are going to stand before Him, but they do not seem to see 
their situation. Learn in time to prepare to meet your 
God, and see the condition in which you are. 

2. Another thing which we ought to learn is to act 
quickly when we know a thing is right. This unjust stew- 
ard acted quickly because he knew he was wrong. When the 
end came he did not call his lord's debtors in, and say, "Sit 
down and we will talk this matter over;" he called the first 
one in and said, "How much do you owe my lord?" "One 
hundred measures of oil;" "Sit down quickly, and write 
fifty. Get out. Come in the next man. How much do you 
owe my lord?" "One hundred measures of wheat." "About 
fourteen hundred bushels; take off two hundred and eighty 
bushels, and get out of the ivay. Come in the next one." 
He did not lose any time ; he worked hard and fast ; the set- 
tlement had to be made in a hurry. I want to tell you that 
if you are not a child of God you had better prepare now to 
meet your God in heaven; better repent of your sins before 
you step out of this house; better make peace with your God. 
Accept Jesus Christ before you walk out of that door. Make 
up your mind to be baptized in the name of the Father, Son 
and Holy Ghost, The day is coming when it will be too 
late. What you do, do now. 

3. Finally, prepare, a home for the future. What did 
this unjust steward call in these debtors for? He saw very 
well that he could not dig any more; saw very well that it 
would be a disgrace for that noble man to go around and 
begin to beg ; so he made up his mind in a hurry — he was a 
smart rascal — I am going to call in these men and make 
them partners in my crime; I will take this man that owes 
one hundred measures of oil, and settle with him on the basis 
of fifty, and make him guilty of robbery of half of that oil ; 
this other man owes fourteen hundred bushels of wheat; I 
will make him guilty of robbery of two hundred and eighty 
bushels ; so, when the lord comes back and puts me out of the 



NINTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. <i()l 

stewardship, I will walk up to my debtor and say, "I am go- 
ing to live with you now." "By what right?" "That does 
not make any difference; you know very well what recent 
fraud you and I went through with; if you don't take me in- 
to your home I will report you." So he spends a year with 
the man who robbed his lord of the fifty measures of oil. The 
next year he goes to the man who robbed his lord of two hun- 
dred and eighty bushels of wheat, and says, "I am going to 
make my home with you." "You cannot do it." "Yes, I 
can. I will expose you to the law ; you have got to take me 
in." So he goes from one man to the other, and always has a 
home. He is a smart scoundrel. "Now, then," says the Lord 
Jesus, "I want you to learn a lesson from this smart scoun- 
drel ; I want you, not to do as he did, but I want you to pre- 
pare a home above, so you will know where you are going 
when you die." "And I say unto you, Make to y ourselves 
friends of the mammon of unrighteousness; that, Avhen ye 
fail, they may receive you into everlasting habitations." The 
day is coming when you and I will lie down and breathe our 
last breath, and then we shall fail, as far as the world is con- 
cerned, but if we live as children of God and believe in Christ 
then we will also do £K>od work with the dirtv dollars. We 
will not do things because we expect thereby to be saved, but 
do things because we are saved, and, being saved, we will go 
home on the Judgment Day and there meet the ones we have 
befriended, and they will stand by us and say, "These became 
friends of ours by giving us the dirty dollars when we needed 
them ;" and, God helping us, we will all go home to heaven. 
Dear friends, learn from the unjust steward how to discern 
your condition; to act quickly; and how to get a home that 
will abide forever. May God give this home to you, is my 
prayer. Amen. 

PRAYER. 

We ask Thy divine blessing, O Heavenly Father, upon the message 
of the hour. Lord God there is no better word in Thy Word, than the 
word we have heard to-day; nothing which is more of a lamp to our 
feet and a light unto our path than the words we have heard expounded 
from Thy Truth. We pray Thee to help us give ourselves a personal ex- 
amination; help us to learn to be honest in this world, and no disgrace 
to our parents, to the Church, or to our Lord and Master. We pray Thee, 
O God, to give us a congregational conscience, of which we heard at the 



602 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

last service. We pray Thee that Thou wilt help us so to live that men 
must respect us whether they will or not. We pray Thee, Q God, that 
Thou wilt help us to go to our respective homes with a rich blessing and 
a determination to serve our Master better than we ever have before. 
Forgive us all our sins of the past ; and may we now go forth in Thy 
name, living, as ,long as we live, for Thy glory, and at last gather us 
home — home to Thee in heaven. We ask it all in Jesus' name, who 
taught us to pray : 

Our Father, who art in heaven : Hallowed be Thy name ; Thy king- 
dom come; Thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven. Give us, this 
day, our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those 
who trespass against us. Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from 
evil; for Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever 
and ever. Amen. 



TENTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY, 



WHY DID JESUS CRY?. 



Luke 19:41-48. 



{{ I m ND when He was come near He beheld the city, and wept over it, 
F™1 saying, If thou hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy day, 
' ■" *• the things which belong unto thy peace ! but now they are hid 
from thine eyes. For the days shall come upon thee, that thine enemies 
shall cast a trench about thee, and compass thee round, and keep thee in 
on every side, and shall lay thee even with the ground, and thy children 
within thee ; and they shall not leave in thee one stone upon another ; 
because thou knewest not the time of thy visitation. And He went into 
the temple and began to cast them out that sold therein, and them that 
bought; saying unto them, It is written, My house is the house of prayer: 
but ye have made it a den of thieves. And He taught daily in the temple. 
But the chief priests and the scribes and he chief of the people sought to 
destroy Him, and could not find what they might do: for all the people 
were very attentive to hear Him. 

Sanctify us, O Lord, through Thy Truth : 
Thy Word is Truth. Amen. 



bear Christian Friends : — 

Three times in the history of Christ's life on earth did 
He weep, and these three times of weeping took place in 
the latter days of His ministry. When He stood by the 
grave of Lazarus He shed tears of love and sympathy; 
when He stood before the city of Jerusalem five days be- 
fore His crucifixion, He not only shed tears, but He wept 
aloud, with great lamentations. Most Christians think 
that Jesus wept only twice, but He wept three times. In 
Hebrews 5:7 we read these words: "Who in the days of 
His flesh, when He had offered up prayers and supplica- 
tions with strong crying and tears unto Him that was able 

603 



()04 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

to save Him from death, and was heard in that He feared." 
In other words, the apostle Paul, either by inspiration or 
tradition discovered the great fact that on the cross Jesus 
not only uttered seven words, but wept aloud, redeeming 
the world. The theme that I wish to present to you this 
morning is: 

WHY DID JESUS CRY? 

I shall answer it in two ways: 

I. Because He was about to finish an awful sacrifice. 
II. Because the chief citizens of Jerusalem icere making 
an aioful mistake. 

May God, the Holy Spirit, help every chief citizen in this 
house this morning to see his responsibility. 

I. The Lord Jesus was about to complete an awful sac- 
rifice. I use.the word awful in its correct sense this morn- 
ing. It was awful how Jesus now began that very great sac- 
rifice on Calvary. He was now about ready to give up every- 
thing; He teas about ready to suffer everything ; He was 
about ready to give to His enemies the best of everything. 

1. About ready to give up everything. It was a great 
sacrifice on the part of Jesus Christ when He threw off His 
radiant garments on high and made known to the angels 
that He was coming down to earth to become a little child 
in Bethlehem. That was a wonderful sacrifice for Jesus 
Christ, the only heir of heaven and earth, to be born in a 
little crib; and it was an awful sacrifice for Him w^ho put 
the stars into space with His Word to take the hammer 
and drive nails as a carpenter; it was an awful sacrifice 
for Him w T ho made the blood in all veins to shed His blood 
as a child eight days old, to put Himself under the law, 
and to go about on this earth as the poorest mortal, with- 
out a place to lay His head. It was an awful sacrifice He 
was making in those three years of His ministry, and espe- 
cially in these last days w r hen starting for Jerusalem to 
die for the sins of the world. It was now that He was not 
only giving up the throne and giving up a life of thirty- 
three years, and giving up a ministry of three years, but 
He was approaching the time that made Him sweat drops 



TENTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. 605 

of blood. He had just been anointed down at the house in 
Bethany on His way to Jerusalem to enter as the great 
King; He was on liis way to the Passover as the great 
Tasc ha 1 Lamb, to lay down His life on Calvary's hill, and 
He was giving up everything — everything that He had in 
heaven, and every tiling that He had on earth, even the gar- 
ment that was on His back was to be torn off, and there 
lie was to be, neither on earth nor in heaven, but sus- 
pended on a cross, bearing the curse of the w^orld. It was 
enough to make Him cry. 

2. He was not only giving up everything, but He was 
ready to suffer everything. You also have suffered; you 
have been sick; you have had your aches and pains; you 
have had your troubles of conscience; you have felt your 
sins, and, if you have ever sincerely repented, you have 
felt the curse of God resting upon you; but I tell you, my 
dear friends, when the Lord Jesus Christ was going to 
Jerusalem, He was going there not only to suffer His pains, 
and your pains, and my pains, but there never had been a 
pain from the days of Adam until the day of His w r eeping 
before Jerusalem; there was not a pain within the walls 
of that great city, and there was not a pain on all the earth 
to come; there was not a pain in the tongue of the rich 
man in hell, or any other man in hell; there was not a 
thing to endure in all the w T orld that was not centered in 
Jesus Christ; and not only centered in Jesus Christ, but 
centered in His nerves. There is not a more painful place 
in man's body than in the hands, and in the feet, where 
all the nerves center; and it was there, in those centers 
of all the whole nervous system, that He w^as to be nailed 
to the cross, and there for six hours endure an eternal hell 
of all men in a short time. The tongue of man will never 
be able to describe what it was that Jesus Christ endured 
on that cross. Those three black hours when the sun re- 
fused to shine were emblematic of the awful treading of 
the wine press of God's wrath alone by the Son of God, 
who cried out, "My God, My God, Why hast Thou forsaken 
Me?" — It w r as enough to make Him cry. 

3. He not only suffered everything, but He was also 
about to (fire us the best of everything. What is the best 



606 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

that man could have in this world? Some people say it 
is health. Oh, there is something a great deal better than 
health. Health is good, and the man that does not appre- 
ciate his days of health is to be pitied, but I tell you there 
is something worth a great deal more than health. I ask 
another man, What is the most valuable thing on earth? 
and he tells me, great wealth; but Oh, my dear friends, 
you cannot even take great wealth and buy health; health 
is worth more than wealth. I ask another man, What is 
the most valuable thing on earth? He tells us it is char- 
acter; but Oh, my friends, there is something worth more 
than character, there is something that makes charac- 
ter, and if you have not got that something, you will 
never have the character you ought to have, and conse- 
quently I say there is something better than all these 
things. I ask another man, What is the very best? He 
says, health, and wealth, character^ and long life. Even 
long life, good as it is is not the best. There is something 
better than all these things I have mentioned. What good 
will health do; what good will wealth do; what good will 
simply a strong character do; what good will long life do, 
if a man is not saved? What good will it do a man when he 
takes his last breath, if his immortal soul must leap into 
eternal darkness? What was Jesus Christ going to Jeru- 
salem for? He was going there in order that He might, 
by giving up everything, and suffering everything, give to 
His own enemies the very best of everything; and that best 
of everything was redemption, which brings peace to a 
man's conscience and soul — peace with God and peace 
with man. The man that in Jesus Christ has found peace 
of soul, has found the best thing in all the world; and it 
was that giving of the best thing to a people who did not 
want it, that made Jesus cry. "And when He was come 
near, He beheld the city and wept over it, saying, If thou 
hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy day, the things 
which belong unto thy peace! but now they are hid from 
thine eyes" — "and that makes Mine eyes weep," can be 
added. 

II. He not only wept because He was about to make 
an awful sacrifice, but He wept especially because the chief 



TENTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. (H)7 

citizens of Jerusalem were making an awful mistake. 
"And He taught daily in the temple. But the chief priests 
and the scribes and the chief of the people sought to de- 
stroy Him." And that is the mistake they made. Who are 
these chief people? What did they do? WJtat could they 
have done? 

1. We learn in a few words who these chief people 
were in Jerusalem — chief priests, the principal teachers 
in the temple; the scribes, the theologians, the transcrib- 
ers of God's Word, the interpreters of the holy law, and 
the chief of the people, the chief Pharisees, the chief Sad- 
ducees, the politicians, the lawyers, the leading people, to 
whom the common people were looking up, they were the 
ones who were seeking to destroy His life, and not the 
masses, "They could not find what they might do, for all 
the people were very attentive to hear Him." The masses 
never would have crucified Jesus Christ. It was the chief 
people that did it, the chief citizens. What I would like 
to impress upon this audience this morning is the awful 
responsibility resting upon those who are the chief people. 
Who are they to-day? Why not mention first of all the 
educators? Why not mention, as the Word of God does, 
the ministers of the Gospel? The man that stands between 
dying men and God, as a dying man, holds a position 
higher than the President of the United States, higher 
than any political office, and such men in every community 
are looked upon as chief people in the city, without any 
egotism, it is simply the place where God put them. Why 
not speak of the professors, and superintendents, and teach- 
ers in our public schools? Are they not leading citizens 
to whom the scholars and families are looking? Are not 
the chief citizens the officials in the city, in the court house, 
and in the public schools? Are they not church councils, — 
men that are looked up to in the church and watched every 
day? Are the chief people of our city not also the editors 
of our papers, — men that every day are sending hundreds 
of inches of printed matter into every home, read by par- 
ents and read by children? Are the chief people of our 
city not also the lawyers — men who are to decide between 
right and wrong, between neighbor and neighbor? Are not 



608 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

the chief people of our city the physicians, the men who 
are called into the homes of the rich and the poor — the 
men who are called to the bedside of the sick and dying? 
Is not that a position in life that the world is looking up 
to? And might I not mention also many others, such as 
the chief merchants, and the chief manufacturers, and the 
chief farmers, and such as are holding high offices in Church 
and state? And might I not mention every father and 
mother in the home? Do not the little children look up 
to father as being a man, and to mother as being a woman? 
And do not little children look up to all those who are 
above them, as much as to say, "I am surprised if you do 
not know everything?" Now the very fact that there are 
people below us, as there are some above us, goes to show 
that in every community there are chief citizens, the chief 
of the people, and that these people have a great respon- 
sibility resting upon them. 

2. Having shown you who these chief people are, let 
me show you what they did. What did they do in the city 
of Jerusalem? In the first place they neglected their own 
souls. These men who were copying the Bible and handing 
it over to the people for large sums of money, neglected 
their own immortal souls, just as some preachers to-day 
will preach as long as they get a salary, and the moment 
they leave the pulpit you never see them in church any 
more — ruining their own souls. 

Not only do they ruin their own souls, but they injure 
the Church. "And He went into the temple and began to 
cast out them that sold therein, and them that bought, 
saying unto them, It is written, My house is the house of 
prayer, but ye have made it a den of thieves." Who were 
these men that were buying and selling in the temple? 
They were not men of ordinary standing; they were men 
who were looked up to — bankers — financiers — men who 
handled the gold and the silver — but instead of going 
into the temple to worship the Triune God, they stayed out 
in the court, and there were changing and trading oxen 
and sheep and doves; instead of going into the house of 
God to worship as Christians should, they were out there 
with their tables exchanging money, shaving notes; they 



TENTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. 609 

are not the common people. They remind ns of some peo- 
ple in our own day who would walk ten squares to go to 
a supper, but would not come to Divine service; they re- 
mind us of people who are perfectly willing to do anything 
to feed their stomachs, but nothing to feed their souls. 

These chief people not only injured the house of God, 
but they misled the masses. For all the people were very 
attentive to hear Him, except these chief people, and the 
priests and the scribes. From these two verses we learn 
that the common people, on the one hand, looked up to 
their leaders and, on the other, were perfectly willing to 
worship Jesus Christ. They had respect for the Pharisee; 
they had great respect for the scribes; they had great re- 
spect for even the Sadducees, and for all the politicians and 
rulers, and the consequence was that in five days' time 
the very people who were throwing down their garments 
for Jesus Christ to ride over, and plucking the palm 
branches and throwing them before Him, singing "Ho- 
sanna to the Son of David! Blessed is He that cometh in 
the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest!" — in five 
days these people were standing around Pontius Pilate, 
and, at the urging of these chief citizens, cried out, "Cru- 
cify Him! Crucify Him!" Oh! the responsibility of the 
leading citizens of any city! I will dare say that one hun- 
dred men in the city of Mansfield can start a mob that 
would tar and feather any preacher in Mansfield in ten 
days' time. These same people who are running after Jesus 
Christ until He had to step into a boat on the Sea of Galilee 
to preach to them; these same people who followed Him 
from Mount Olivet to the city, crying Hosanna! these same 
people, misled by these chief citizens, helped to crucify 
Jesus Christ. 

That is not all, — they brought about the ruin of the 
city of Jerusalem. These chief citizens were the cause of 
Jerusalem's destruction. "For the days shall come upon 
thee, that thine enemies shall cast a trench about thee, 
and compass thee round, and shall lay thee even with the 
ground, and thy children within thee; and they shall not 
leave in thee one stone upon another; because thou knewest 
not the time of thy visitation," That was a wonderful 

39 



610 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

prophecy that Jesus made that day over that wonderful 
city, Jerusalem, with the tears flowing down over His 
face. As He stood on Mount Olivet, I can see that city 
with its three large walls, four miles in circumference, 
with rocks in them thirty feet long, and fifteen feet wide 
and seven and a half feet high; I can see those solid towers 
of rock thirty feet square, so neatly built that you cannot 
find the crevice, ninety on the first wall, sixty on another 
wall, and forty on another; I can see that beautiful temple 
as it stands on Mount Moriah, on the very hill where Abra- 
ham was about to offer his little son Isaac; I can see the 
golden spires as they sparkle under the sun; I can see that 
city as the Lord Jesus Christ weeps over it, and, humanly 
speaking, I can say, "Why weep over the destruction of 
this great city? It will stand as long as the world stands." 
But Jesus said, "No, these chief citizens have brought 
about its destruction. The time is coming when the enemy 
will come and he will heap up walls around it; he will heap 
them up on every side; he will keep the citizens within, 
and they will perish, and not one stone shall remain on top 
of another" — a prophecy that seemed impossible ; and yet, 
my dear friends, before forty years had passed Vespasian 
Avas over in Galilee and had killed forty thousand Jews. 
He went home and sent his son Titus, who went around 
those walls, and hemmed them in on every side. I can see 
Titus as he stands there with his Eoman eagles and his 
great army; I can see within those walls at that Passover 
time over three millions of people; I can see furthermore 
how those three millions of people are not allowed to es- 
cape; I can see furthermore how in one day five hundred 
were taken out on the hills around those walls and crucified 
until there was no room for the crosses of the people, and no 
crosses for the rest to be crucified. Oh, what a curse fell 
upon Jerusalem for crucifying Jesus Christ! Five hundred 
men in one day nailed to crosses outside of those walls by 
Titus and his Koman generals. Two hundred and forty thou- 
sand people were killed outside of the walls of Jerusalem, 
and ninety-seven thousand were sent as exiles to Egypt. I 
can see others jumping down over those walls, falling into 
the hands of the enemy, and having their hands chopped off 



TENTH SUNDAY A ITER TRINITY. 611 

and sent back to warn them to give up the city. I can see, 
furthermore, the destruction of one wall after the other, 
until, as Josephus tells us, not one stone remains on top 
of the other, and the plow turns the furrow where once the 
large walls stood. I can see furthermore where one mes- 
senger comes to Titus and says that this very day one hun- 
dred and fifteen thousand, eight hundred and eighty dead 
people were carried out of one gate, ^#hile six hundred 
thousand men, women and children are dying in agony and 
perishing on account of hunger. I can see within that city, 
only forty years after Jesus w T ept over it, people swelling 
up on account of starvation, and running out and asking 
for food; I can see how bread was given to the starving 
people, and they ate too much, and died. I can see not 
only how these people perished by eating too much when 
almost starved, but how they are cut open by the enemy. 
We are told that before they left the city they swallowed 
the gold and silver they had, and when that was learned 
the enemy grew wrathy and cut open every man to find 
the gold he had swallowed. I can look into history this 
morning and see how these chief citizens brought about 
the worst calamity that ever befell any nation on earth. 
I can see in a short time one million, one hundred thousand 
fathers, mothers and children dying within those walls. I 
can see how Mary, the daughter of Eleazar, who came 
from the western shore of the Jordan, to visit Jerusalem 
during the Passover, was not permitted to return home; 
I can see her as she takes her darling child from her breast 
and says, "To fall into the enemy's hands you must die; 
to stay here you must starve; I will make your death easy" 
— so she slew her own babe. Oh, things took place within 
those walls hardly to be described — all on account of the 
chief citizens of Jerusalem failing to accept the Savior 
when He came, and misleading the people. 

They did more than that — they taught our chief citi- 
zens how to damn the world. The chief citizens to-day 
yet are doing just what the chief citizens did then, when 
the Lord Jesus Christ wept before Jerusalem. He not only 
saw a city that was going to be destroyed; He not only 
saw the awful calamity that was coming to over a million 



G12 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

souls, but He saw that city a type of the world; He saw 
the people of future generations; He saw how in the nine- 
teenth and in the twentieth centuries, and in the last cen- 
tury of the history of the world, the chief citizens would 
be the cause of the masses not serving God. I claim this 
very morning that the chief citizens are the cause of the 
lower classes staying away from the truth, and staying 
away from salvation. 

What did the} T do? Oh, my friends, they made Jesus 
Christ cry, that is what they did. These chief citizens 
brought the tears out of the Savior's eyes on that last great 
journey to the great city. 

3. I not only want to tell you who these citizens are ? 
and what they did do, but I want to show you also what 
they could have done. They could have been Christians 
themselves and they could have led the masses to Christ. 

If those chief citizens of the city of Jerusalem had gone 
out into the public square of Jerusalem and said to the 
people: "We are studying the Bible; we have studied the 
prophecies, and we are certain that Jesus of Nazareth, 
who has made the blind to see and the deaf to hear, and 
who, the other day over here at Bethany, raised up Laza- 
rus from the dead, is actually the promised Messiah, the 
Son of God; let us accept Him as our Christ and Savior/' 
every citizen of Jerusalem would have accepted Christ. 
That is what they could have done, and that is what I 
maintain the chief citizens of our country could do to-day. 
What right has a man to be a teacher in a public school 
in these days, and not be a Christian? What right has a 
man to be an editor of a paper, and lead a reckless, ungodly 
life? What right has a man to hold a position in our own 
county, if his record is not clear? Just as long as cities 
will elect ungodly mayors, just as long as cities will lift 
up ungodly men to official positions, just so long we 
are teaching our youth to forsake Christ. I am not speak- 
ing of any individual now, or of any special city, but you 
all know there is a certain class of people to-day hold- 
ing the highest positions in life, who are immoral. One 
of our own Presidents, whose picture hangs in nearly every 
home as a model, is well known to have been a bad man. 



TENTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. <iK> 

Our chief citizens are responsible, I say, for the laxity 
found among the masses. What right has a man to be a 
plrysician and never go to church? — the man who stands 
by the sick, the man who gives the last touch to the dying, 
a child of the devil, looked up to in all communities — is 
it any wonder that half of the people are going to the 
devil? They tell us that their very occupation does not 
allow them to go to church. I know better. I had a doc- 
tor one time who came to my church, and about every time 
in the middle of the sermon some one would call him out, 
and I made up my mind to follow that doctor once; so I 
sent a boy after him with a bicycle, and every time he went 
out he hitched up his horse, rode about six squares, and 
did not stop anywhere. He wanted to make the people 
believe he had a lot of business. One of the best physi- 
cians in Columbus, Ohio, a man who has as much business 
in his profession, I believe, as any two doctors in Mansfield, 
never misses church. Why? Because he is a Christian, 
that is why. There is no more use of a drug store's being 
open on Sunday than there is of a laundry. I will dare 
say half of the people in this congregation to-day never 
went to a drug store on Sunday, and nobody need go. That 
there may be an exception to this, I will admit, but I say 
the rule is all wrong. And what right has a lawyer — a 
man who of all men on earth ought to know right from 
wrong, and to be filled with justice and righteousness every 
Sunday of his life — what right has a lawyer to be any- 
thing else than a just man of God? And yet the impres- 
sion seems to go around now-a-days that if you find a mon- 
ument on which it says, "Here lies a lawyer and an hon- 
est man/ 7 that there are two in the grave. I say again, if 
any man on earth ought to be an honest man, a follower 
of Him who gave the law to Moses, it ought to be the law- 
yer. And thus we might follow along the whole row of 
chief citizens. The time ought to come, my friends, that 
when a man is not a child of God, when a man is not a 
fit representative for children to follow, that he ought to be 
put down where he belongs, and stop upholding rascality 
and putting it in public places. 



614 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

Just as those chief priests and scribes and the chief 
of the people were responsible for the destruction of Jeru- 
salem, just so the chief people of our country to-day are 
misleading the masses, and are the cause of strikes, re- 
bellion of all kinds; and therefore, I make a plea to-day 
for the chief people in every home and in every city at 
once to use their power to lead the masses aright. What 
a wonderful revolution would take place in our own city 
if every lawyer would arise and say, "I am going to be a 
child of God, and go to church, and worship the true and 
living God!" What a wonderful revolution, if all of our 
editors would get down on their knees and pray, and lead 
the people on that path! What a wonderful revolution if 
every one of our professors and teachers in our public 
schools, and in all kinds of secular lines, would take a 
stand that children could look up to, and follow Christ! 
What a wonderful effect it would have on the masses! 
But this very day you will find this city full of poor, drunken 
sots; of poor, low down, fallen women; and of all classes 
of people who are comforting themselves with the fact 
that if they are going to hell, some preachers, and teachers, 
and doctors and lawyers are going with them, and they 
will all go together. May God hasten the day when the 
chief citizens of every community will feel their responsi- 
bility, and show the masses the right way to live, and the 
right way to die. 

I want to give you, in conclusion, two contrasts as found 
in this Word and in history. In the first place we are told 
here that Jesus stood out on the hillside of Olivet, and 
wept. Let us go to history and I will show you another 
scene. Josephus tells us that when thousands of people 
starved together and perished in the city of Jerusalem, 
the strangest thing about all funerals was that no one 
wept; they all stood there with dry eyes and open mouths. 
When the temple in that great city burned, it is said that 
the soldiers walked over the dead and stepped into their 
blood, while the fires were kindled to the skies. Not a tear 
within that city, but outside there was One who wept. 
What a contrast! 



TENTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. 615 

But I would show you auother contrast. The time is 
coming when a larger city than Jerusalem will burn. The 
fires within this earth are so hot that no tool can be made 
to-day that can drill a hole over six thousand feet deep. 
If you were to travel with me through Yellowstone Park, 
you would see evidences on the very surface, of the fire 
within this great earth, and we are told by one, who speaks 
by inspiration, that the heavens shall roll back like a scroll, 
and the earth shall be burned up; and when that last con- 
flagration shall come, then the contrast will be just the 
opposite of Avhat it was before. Then, w r e are told by the 
great Judge, Jesus Christ Himself, that there shall be 
weeping and gnashing of teeth; but on His part there will 
be no tears. On that day Jesus Christ will not stand and 
weep. When the great judge, Bias, had condemned a 
young man to death, he sank back in his chair and w T ept 
like a babe. Some one stepped up and said, "Judge, why 
do you cry? This young man's life was in your hands; you 
might have set him free. Why do you cry?" "I weep as a 
man — as a judge, I condemn him." And so our Lord 
Jesus Christ, on the hill of Olivet wept as the Son of man; 
but on that last great day when the fires shall destroy the 
great city of the earth, He will condemn as Judge, and 
there will be no tears in His eyes that day. 

Oh, dear friends, ask yourselves the question this morn- 
ing: Am I a chief citizen? Am I wielding the right in- 
fluence upon my fellow men? Am I helping the people to 
cry out, "Crucify Him," or to bend their knees in prayer 
to Him? May God sanctify these words to His eternal 
glory, and to your eternal good. Amen. 

PRAYER. 

We ask Thy divine blessing, our Heavenly Father, upon this message 
of the hour. This is no ordinary message that brought the tears to the 
eyes of Thy Son, Jesus Christ. This is no ordinary sword to-day wielded 
by Thy Holy Spirit to cut into the very conscience, and we pray Thee that 
Thou wilt bless every one that is within the walls of this house to-day. 
We pray Thee that Thou wilt help us to feel our responsibility in this life. 
O God, our Heavenly Father, we ask Thee to be with the masses who have 
been misled in many ways by the chief citizens. We pray Thee, O God, 
that Thou wilt help them to realize more and more that the only -safe guide 



616 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

is Thy Holy Word, which never made a mistake ; and the One who made 
it, Jesus Christ, who says : I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life, and no 
man cometh to the Father but by Me. O Lord, do Thou purify Thy temple, 
and help that in that temple nothing may take place except that which is 
pleasing to Thee. We pray Thee that Thou wilt go with us throughout this 
week, and throughout our life, and use us to Thy glory. Help us that our 
words, and our deeds, and all our thoughts, may be for the leading of the 
masses to Thee. We ask it all in Jesus' name, who taught us to pray: 

Our Father, who art in heaven : Hallowed be Thy name ; Thy king- 
dom come; Thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven. Give us, this 
day, our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those 
who trespass against us. Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from 
evil; for Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever 
and ever. Amen. 



ELEVENTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. 



THE HEAVENLY HUNTER. 



Matt. 18: 9-14. 



H 



it j f ND He spoke this parable unto certain which trusted in themselves 
that they were righteous, and despised others : Two men went 
up into the temple to pray; the one a Pharisee, and the other a 
publican. The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, God, I thank 
Thee, that I am not as other men are, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or 
even as this publican. I fast twice in the week; I give tithes of all that I 
possess. And the publican standing afar off, would not lift up so much as his 
eyes unto heaven but, smote upon his breast, saying, God be merciful to me, 
a sinner. I tell you this man went down to his house justified rather than 
the other : for every one that exalteth himself shall be abased ; and he that 
humbleth himself shall be exalted." 

Sanctify us, O Lord, through Thy Truth : 
Thy Word is Truth. Amen. 



Dearly Beloved in Christ : — 

You have often thought of Jesus Christ as the Great Shep- 
herd, and as the Great Physician, but have you ever lost that 
beautiful thought in connection with the Great Shepherd, 
that He is the Great Hunter? When sin came into the world 
Jesus immediately started after Adam to find him, and said, 
"Adam, Avhere art thou?" — and from that day to this, and 
from this day to the end of the world, that hunt for immortal 
souls has never ceased. Everywhere in the Gospel we find 
Jesus coming down and hunting men. "The Son of man is 
come to seek and to save that which was lost." I would like 
to have you think of this Great Hunter, Jesus, the God-man, 
the Son of God, able to pay the debt of the world, the Son of 
man, willing to put Himself under the law, and thereby able 
to die, because He became man, reaching out and searching 
day and night, that none might be lost, — the heavenly 
Hunter. The verse preceding our text, in which it is said : 

617 



618 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

"Nevertheless when the Son of man cometh, shall He find 
faith on the earth?" led me to my theme — 

THE HEAVENLY HUNTER. 

I. What is He limiting? 
II. Where is He hunting? 
III. What is Be finding? 

These three questions we will ask the Holy Spirit to help 
us now to answer. 

I. For what is this Great Hunter hunting? The answer 
lies in the words just quoted "Nevertheless, when the Son 
of man cometh, shall He find faith on the earth?" "Two men 
went up into the temple to pray." The two things that He 
is looking for in the Christian, are True Christian prayer and 
a true living faith. 

1. In the first part of this chapter the Lord Jesus Christ 
points out an unjust judge, — a man of the world, a man who 
neither feared God nor regarded man ; a certain widow came 
to him and asked him to avenge her of a certain wrong done 
her by an adversary ; he paid no attention to her ; she came 
again, and again, and again, and at last, though he had no 
regard for God nor for man, in order that he might get rid 
of her, he answered her petition. "Now then," says the Lord 
Jesus Christ, "if an ungodly judge will answer a widow sim- 
ply to get rid of her, why should not the just and holy God, 
who has offered to hear our prayers, not answer the true 
prayers of His own children elect?" Consequently He ad- 
monishes men to pray in the right spirit, and therefore holds 
up to us the parable of the publican and the Pharisee. 

Now, it is this true prayer that the Heavenly Hunter is 
seeking for to-day. He wants the people to come to Him in 
true humility, and knock at heaven's door. Prayer is not 
simply a privilege, it is a command. "Ask, and it shall be 
given ; seek and ye shall find ; knock and it shall be opened 
unto you; and to everyone that asketh it shall be given." 
There is one of the greatest and grandest promises in all of 
God's Word. It does not mean simply now and then to lift 
up a sigh to heaven ; it does not mean simply to seek now and 



ELEVENTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. C>1<) 

then for a blessing, but the command conies threefold — ask, 
seek, knock. L might come to your house and ask, and you 
would pay no attention to me; but if I keep on coming, and 
asking, and seeking, I might get your attention; but if I 
should keep on asking, and seeking and knocking, you would 
at last say, ik l have got to hear what that man wants." The 
Lord our God does not want simply a sigh to heaven, and an 
asking now and then, but He wants us to go to His Word and 
find His promises, and hold them up to Him, and keep on 
asking, and seeking, and knocking, until our prayers are an- 
swered. Let us therefore have true Christian prayer. There 
are so many people in these days asking for things that God 
never promised, and wondering w T hy they do not get what 
they ask for. The Lord never promised any man that He 
would heal all the sick; He never promised any man that 
no sick one should die ; He never promised any man to give 
him several farms, or thousands of dollars when he did not 
need them ; but He has promised this : "Call upon Me in the 
day of trouble, and I will deliver thee, and thou shalt glorify 
Me." There is a promise He wants the people to hold to, and 
when they are in trouble, go to Him, and ask Him, and seek, 
and knock until the deliverance comes; and God has more 
than one way to deliver, but He never fails to deliver. 

2. Now for such prayer the Heavenly Hunter is hunting, 
and that kind of prayer cannot come unless we have faith. 
Paul said in his epistle to the Konians : "How shall they call 
on Him in whom they have not believed?" It is therefore 
folly to ask a young unbeliever to pray. The thing to do 
with the unbeliever is to convince him of God's eternal truth, 
and let the Holy Spirit give him faith, and when he has 
faith in God he will pray, and cannot help it. Prayer, for 
the Christian, is just as natural as breathing is to life. Try 
to live until to-morrow morning without breathing. You 
can do it just as well as you can live spiritually without 
prayer. And so the Savior put the question: "When the 
Son of Man cometh shall He find faith on the earth?" When 
the Heavenly Hunter comes shall He find that people know 
of Him, and believe His message to be true, and hold fast to 
it? That is faith, and, having that kind of faith, the Heaven- 
ly Hunter finds the true basis of prayer. It was that kind 



020 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

of faith that the publican had when he smote on his breast 
and said, "God be merciful to me a sinner." "I tell you," 
says Jesus, "that man went down to his house justified rather 
than the other; for every one that exalteth himself shall be 
abased, and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted." Why 
did this man go down to his house justified? Because a man 
is justified by faith. He had a prayer that no one could im- 
prove upon. No one walked up to the publican, and said. 
Now you say : "God" "God ;" "Be" "be ;" "Merciful" "merci- 
ful;" "To" "to;" "Me" "me;" "A" "a;" "Sinner" "sinner." 
It was not necessary to teach this man how to pray. The 
real truth of it is that his soul had found out that there is 
a God of mer,cy, and he believed in that God of mercy, and 
knew that his own soul was ruined and lost without that 
mercy, and he cried out, "I cannot help it. God, be merciful 
to me a sinner." The Heavenly Hunter is looking for that 
kind of prayer and that kind of faith. 

II. And where is He hunting? He is hunting all over 
the earth; and all over the house of God. 

1. "When the Son of man cometh shall He find faith on 
the earth?" My dear friends, the Lord Jesus Christ is not 
so narrow-minded as most of His followers. Most Chris- 
tians are perfectly satisfied if they have a houseful of people, 
and a minister of the Gospel who is faithful, and the people 
come and hear the truth — that is about all some people care 
for. There are some people who are perfectly satisfied if 
they are living in a Christian land, or a Christian city, and 
never ask any other questions about the world. The Lord 
Jesus Christ did not come here to save only the people of 
the Holy Land ; He did not only come to save the people in 
Europe, or America, but the Son of man is come to seek and 
to save that which was lost. The Heavenly Hunter is look- 
ing up and down every valley, and over every hill, and up and 
down every stream, and along every ocean, and across every 
island, and over every continent, and wherever He finds the 
footprint of man, the Heavenly Hunter is after him, to find 
him ; and not only to find him, but to find his soul. 

2. This same Heavenly Hunter is not only looking over 
every part of the earth, but He is looking up and down, all 
over the temple. Two men went up into the temple to pray, . 






ELEVENTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. 021 

the one a Pharisee and the other a publican. The Pharisee 
stood and prayed thus with himself, and the publican stood 
alar off, and also prayed. I can see those two men as they 
walk into the temple. I can see this Pharisee as he walks 
on up through the aisle, and goes up to the very curtain to 
the very Holy of Holies, standing as near as possible to the 
place where only the high priest dare stand : I can see him as 
he stands there and praises himself in the form of prayer, 
and it may be that every eye was turned on that great and 
noble Pharisee; but away back in some corner, unobserved 
by men, possibly ashamed to be seen, afar off, stands a poor 
publican, smiting his breast, and praying, "God be merciful 
to me a sinner;" it may be that he only sighed in his own 
heart this prayer, but there was One who was not paying 
as much attention to the Pharisee as to the publican. Who 
w T as it? The Heavenly Hunter. Oh, there is no prayer in 
the house of God, whether it be in the front of the building, 
or in the rear ; whether it be back in some lonely little room, 
or whether it be at the pulpit ; there is no sigh to heaven, but 
that the Heavenly Hunter finds it. He is hunting up and 
down the Church of God. It may be that some of you — oh, 
it not only may be, if you are Christians it is true, that some 
of you have been praying to-day, "O God, bless this man 
who is speaking to us in Thy name;" the Heavenly Hunter 
heard it ; the Heavenly Hunter saw the faith ; the Heavenly 
Hunter knows the sigh. It may be that you have troubles 
that no man on earth knows so w T ell as you yourself, but the 
Heavenly Hunter found that sigh; the Heavenly Hunter 
knows that trouble; the Heavenly Hunter has heard that 
prayer. No difference where it is found on God's earth, God 
heard it. "If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in 
the uttermost parts of the sea; even there shall Thy hand 
lead me, and Thy right hand shall hold me," said the Psalm- 
ist. "If I make my bed in hell, behold, Thou art there." 

III. And now, when this Heavenly Hunter is hunting up 
and down over all the earth, and hunting up and down 
through the temple, what is He finding? He finds many 
Pharisees everywhere ; and many Christians nowhere. 

1. Many Pharisees everywhere. "Two men went up 
into the temple to pray, the one a Pharisee and the other a 



022 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

publican/' but you must not suppose for a single moment, 
that there was only one Pharisee there. Listen to the first 
verse of my text : "And He spake this parable unto certain 
which trusted themselves that they were righteous, and de- 
spised others." In other words, Jesus found Himself sur- 
rounded by the Pharisaic spirit, and in order to convince the 
people of the meanness of Pharisaism, He pictured the Phar- 
isee to represent them all. In other words, this Heavenly 
Hunter finds many Pharisees everywhere. 

What are their characteristics? The third Sunday after 
Trinity you remember I spoke on the theme, "Pity the Poor 
Pharisee." It is not my purpose in this course of lectures 
on the Gospel to repeat again and again the same thoughts; 
nevertheless there are a few thoughts necessary to repeat to 
understand the parable of the text, and one is that this Phar- 
isee can be found anywhere in the Church ; he can be found 
everywhere in human society ; he can be found everywhere 
even in prisons and the lowest dives and dens. You ask the 
average man, Is the world good and bad? and he answers, 
Yes. It is the answer of the Church; it is the answer of 
human organizations; it is the answer of the prisons. Ask 
any man here to-night, Is the world good and bad, and he 
correctly, according to his estimation, answers, Yes. Who 
are the good? We are. Who are the bad? The others. Ask 
human societies, Why do you organize in cliques? Because 
the world is good and bad. Who are the good? We are. 
the bad? The others. Go into the prisons to-day all 
over this country, and ask every prisoner, Is the world 
good and bad?' Yes. Are all the bad here in the prison? 
No, sir. Are the worst people in prison? No, sir, you will 
find them outside. — Pharisees in prison ; Pharisees in 
human society; Pharisees in the Church; Pharisees every- 
where. You will find them in the pulpit ; you will find them 
in the choirs; you will find them among the Sunday-school 
teachers; you w T ill find them in church councils; you will 
find them everywhere. I tell you, my friends, the Pharisee 
can be found without doing anything more than putting your 
hand out and drawing it to your own breast. Why is it that 
we have in some churches so many choir troubles? — Thank 
God, we have none here — Why is it? Because there is a 



ELEVENTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. 623 

Pharisee that will not sing beside this one, or that one. Why 
is it that some people will liot sing in choruses, but only so- 
los? Because they think: Look here at this great Pharisee 
singing now! Why is it that we have so many people who 
are constantly finding fault with others? Because they 
thereby expect to elevate themselves; just like the old Phar- 
isee that stood there in the temple and said, "God, I thank 
Thee that I am not as other men are, extortioners, unjust, 
adulterers, or even as this publican." Just as soon as you 
tind that you are pointing at any other person in this world, 
thinking that you are so much better, that moment you have 
found the Pharisee in yourself, and, as I said a while ago, 
you do not need to go very far to find this spirit. We have 
to fight against it. It appears in every preacher; in every 
choir ; in every teacher ; in every man that is a success, and 
jet with it there is no success at all. 

2. While this is true that the Heavenly Hunter finds the 
Pharisee everywhere and in all places, it is just as true that 
He finds many Christians nowhere. I do not say that He 
finds no Christians, but the very question of the Savior shows 
plainly that there are not nearly so many Christians as we 
enerally suppose. a When the Son of man cometh shall He 
find faith on the earth?" Why, if I were to ask the question 
this morning, Shall we find faith in the First Lutheran 
Church ? you would think that was awful to ask such a ques- 
tion, and yet the Heavenly Hunter looks away beyond this 
congregation, looks away beyond the State of Ohio, looks all 
around this great world and asks the question, When the Son 
of man comes, shall He find faith on the earth? Many are 
called, but few are chosen, is the Word of the eternal God, 
who cannot lie. 

Oh, do not imagine for a single moment that Christians 
are numbered by the hundreds because there are so many in 
the Church. I tell you, my friends, there is a great deal of 
difference between being a true Christian, and simply having 
your name on the book of the church. This Heavenly Hunter 
knows a great deal better how to pick out Christians than I 
do; this Heavenly Hunter never makes mistakes; this Heav- 
enly Hunter is hunting now in this church, and knows every 
true Christian, and knows every Pharisee; but on the au- 



to 



624 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

thority of the Heaventy Hunter Himself, I have a right to 
say that many Christians are found nowhere. We have be- 
fore us the picture of a man who became a true Christian. I 
do not say he always was, for he was not. A publican, as a 
rule, was not a Christian. I picture this publican as a young 
man born of Jewish parents, given instruction in God's Holy 
Word in childhood, growing up, running away from home, 
going out into politics, becoming more and more corrupt, and 
finally getting an office as publican, a gatherer of taxes, and 
one of the chief duties of a publican in those days, politically, 
was to steal all the money that he could, and consequently 
in those days, and to-day yet, when we speak of a publican, 
Ave mean a thief. This man became a thief, but in time he 
went so far on his way to destruction that God went after 
him — this Heavenly Hunter — and with His Holy Spirit 
brought back to him the instruction of his youth ; it may be 
that this man got very sick, and possibly was standing at 
the very gate of death; it may be that, like that prodigal 
son, he had lost all his w T ealth, and got away down to the very 
lowest dregs, willing to live by the side of the swine. What- 
ever his experience was, at any rate he made up his mind that 
the thing to do was to go back to his father's God, and to his 
fathers' Church ; he made up his mind that he is going to find 
peace, if peace can be found ; if it can be found anywhere it 
can be found in the house of God; and so that publican 
started back with the determination that no one will dare 
keep him from that temple, though he is ashamed to go up in 
front. I can see this publican and this Pharisee as they go 
up the street of Jerusalem, and up the hill Moriah, to enter 
the temple ; I can see the proud Pharisee looking at this pub- 
lican as if to say, Stay away from me, you low down publi- 
can ; I can hear the publican saying, "I am going back to the 
house of God, and to the house of my fathers' God, and you 
cannot keep me away ; I will stay afar off, but I am going to 
the temple." 

And right here you have one of the best marks of the true 
child of God. Now and then you find some man or some 
family that has left this church, or left that church, because 
things did not go exactly their way. You never saw a Chris- 
tian in all your life leave his church —Never; I do not care 



ELEVENTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. WZ\y 

whether he leaves the Presbyterian Church, or the Baptist 
Church, or any other denomination, if he does not leave it 
because of a matter of doctrine, that man has not got his 
heart in the right spot, as the Germans say; there is some- 
thing wrong with him. This publican was a child of God, 
and the Heavenly Hunter found him, and no Pharisee, or no 
one else could deprive him of the blessing of at least stand- 
ing within the door of the temple, and smiting his breast, and 
saying, "God be merciful to me a sinner." The Heavenly 
Hunter found a Christian there. How many Christians are 
there to-day that cannot be driven from the house of God? 
"And the publican standing afar off would not lift up so 
much as his eyes unto heaven, but smote upon his breast." 
Notice the difference between his gestures and the gestures 
of the Pharisee. "The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with 
himself, God, I thank Thee, that I am not as other men are, 
extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this publican." 
He looked up toward heaven as if he were the commander 
and God were the subject ; he struck first at the extortioners, 
then at the unjust of all classes; then he happened to think 
of some men who had lived a bad life, and struck at them; 
and last of all he strikes at the poor publican who came up 
street with him — "even as this publican." There you see a 
beautiful picture of the Pharisee; he acted as though he 
Avere praying, but it was no prayer at all; he gives thanks 
to himself, not to God ; he makes a speech of self -exaltation, 
praising himself for the wonderful man that he was. But 
notice the prayer of the Christian; he does not strike at 
the unjust; he does not strike at the extortioner; he does 
not strike at the adulterer; he strikes at himself. 

Whenever the Heavenly Hunter finds a child of God, He 
finds a man or woman who is finding more fault with himself 
or herself than anybody else on earth. Well, some one may 
say, right at this point, If you are a child of God, as our 
pastor, how does it come that you find fault with us? I 
answer that question the same as the judge answered, to 
whom I referred in my last sermon. When the judge con- 
demned the young man, he fell back in his chair and wept 
like a child. When the question came, "Why do you weep? 
You had the power to acquit that man, or to find him guilty," 
to 



626 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

the answer was, "As a man I weep; as a judge I condemn 
him." I want you to understand that when I am here expos- 
ing your sins and mine, I am not here simply as a man, but 
I am here as the messenger of God, and, as a messenger of 
God, I must do things that I would not dare do, and would 
not do as a private man. And why have you found me a lit- 
tle different in private conversation from what I am in pub- 
lic — because in private conversation I meet you also as a 
citizen, as a brother, but when I stand here, I stand here as a 
man of God, to tell you the message of Him ; and the Heav- 
enly Hunter makes no mistakes ; there is the difference. So 
I say again to you, my dear friends, that the true child of 
God that is found by the Heavenly Hunter, never strikes at 
his neighbor ; he has got more fault to find with himself than 
any one else. 

He finds not only that it is best to strike at himself, but 
he finds there is only one place in himself to strike. Oh, it 
seems to me that while that Pharisee was praying what a 
glorious man he was, what a good man he was, I can see that 
publican standing back and thinking no eye is on him but 
God's, striking himself — not on the head, because he thought 
he had made a mistake of the mind ; not on the feet, punish- 
ing them because they had walked on forbidden paths; not 
striking his hands because they had done ungodly deeds ; but 
there was only one place for him to strike — not at his fel- 
low men, not at the limbs of his body, but only at his heart ; 
and every time he hears the Pharisee praising himself, it 
makes him feel little ; he finds no fault with the Pharisee for 
calling him a publican ; he says, "You are right ; there is not 
a more unrighteous man on earth than the publican," 
and there is not a spot about the publican more wrong than 
his heart ; here is the wrong. And there is my wrong, and 
there is yours, and not until you find the right spot to find the 
seat of sin, and go to God, will you be able to down every 
criticism brought against you. 

I hold up to you this publican, the man whom the Heav- 
enly Hunter found, as the man whom no critic can harm. So 
often we find professed Christians hurt greatly because some- 
body said something about them; because somebody found 
fault with them. People sometimes find fault with me, but 



ELEVENTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. 027 

it never hurts me, and 1 will tell you why. Of all the mis- 
takes they have found in me, they have not found the one 
hundredth part of them yet; if they would come to me I 
could tell them a lot of bad things I did they never heard 
about. When a man is a true child of God he does not get 
angry because you find fault with him. If you should keep 
on finding fault with me, the best thing I can do is to do like 
the publican, and say, Eight in here, in my heart, has been all 
the trouble; and you will find that heart has more bad 
thoughts than you know; you will find that this hand has 
been more filthy than you know of ; these feet have walked on 
forbidden paths more than you know of. Do I mean to say 
that I have been a bad man from the standpoint of the world? 
Cto to my home, it is only twenty miles away. I am not 
ashamed to have anybody follow me all through my life, but 
no man on earth can see all the things that took place in my 
heart, — only the Heavenly Hunter, and He knows them all. 
Therefore let us down every criticism by simply acknowledg- 
ing that the critic has not found half the fault yet ; we are a 
great deal worse than he thinks we are. 

What a shame it is for people to stand up and exalt them- 
selves. The least man on earth is the one trying to lift him- 
self above others ; and the best man on earth is the man who 
will get right down beside Jesus Christ, and wash the dis- 
ciples' feet. Jesus Christ was never greater in all the world 
than when He washed His disciples' feet. True humility 
makes men great, and exaltation makes people little, "For 
every one that exalteth himself shall be abased; and he that 
huinbleth himself shall be exalted." 

The true Christian not only can down every bad criticism 
by leaving it alone, but the true Christian will pray for noth- 
ing but forgiveness of sins. The Pharisee seemed to think 
that God ought to accept him because he was so good; the 
publican had nothing in the world to bring to God but his 
sins — nothing whatever — "God be merciful to me a sinner ; 
I have transgressed the law; I have sinned against thee; I 
have sinned against my fellow men; it is impossible for me 
to get rid of my sins; if I were to die to-day I should be 
damned, and damned forever ; the only hope I have of being 
free of this sin is to go to God, and pray to Him because He 



628 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

is merciful — full of mercy, and ask that mercifulness of 
Him to come down on me, a sinner." Oh, God, help us to- 
night, to come in our sins to Thee, and to ask Thy forgiveness, 
and to go home justified. 

In conclusion, let me urge upon all of you to go to my 
Lord, and to the publican's Lord and Master, and give your- 
selves to Him. If you have been thinking in the past that 
you are going to get to heaven on account of your goodness, 
you will eternally fail. Just as well might a bird try to fly 
to heaven with its wings cut off, as a man born in sin, and 
transgressing the law, to enter the heavenly gates by his own 
power. The gates of heaven are so wide that all the world 
can run in side by side if they will go in God's way, and yet 
they are so small that the smallest sin cannot be driven 
through with a maul into eternity, unless it is forgiven. And 
so I would urge upon all sinners to prepare to meet your God. 
An English lord who had a clown to play for him and amuse 
him, one day dismissed that clown with these words: "You 
will now depart from my house, and as a remembrance of 
me, take this cane, and whenever you find a bigger fool than 
you are, give him that cane." Years passed by and the lord 
took sick, and, lying upon his bed of pain and agony, one of 
the visitors that came to his bedside was the clown ; he came 
back again and pitied his poor master, saying, "You are very 
sick, my lord?" "Yes. Yes, clown, I am going away." 
"Going away? Where?" "I do not know." "Coming back 
soon?" "Never." "Going away? Never coming back? 
Where are you going?" The poor clown cried to think that 
his poor master was going away and never coming back. He 
said, "I suppose, my lord, you have made all preparations for 
going?" "No, I haven't done anything. I am going to die 
and that is all I know." "Well, remember, my lord, what 
you said to me years ago, when I left you ; you gave me this 
cane and said I should give it to the first fool I found big- 
ger than I am. Take the cane." That poor clown was not 
quite so big a fool as his lord was. The man that will spend 
his whole life, until his time comes to die, and fail to prepare 
to meet his God, is a bigger fool than the lord's clown ; and 
I would say to you now, if you are not preparing to meet your 
God ; and if you are not now ready to take further instruction 



ELEVENTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. 629 

in God's Holy Word; if you are not willing to accept Christ 
as your only Savior, and your only righteousness; if you are 
not willing to be baptized at the first opportunity in the name 
of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost; and, by being baptized 
into Christ, put on Christ, and get on the narrow way; if you 
are not willing now to walk on the narrow way and be faith- 
ful unto death, and receive the crown of eternal life, then 
with all truth I can only say, you are the biggest fool in the 
world. May God help you to see the right, and walk in His 
way, is my prayer. Amen. 

PRAYER. 

We ask Thy divine blessing, Heavenly Father, upon this message. 
We pray Thee, O God, Thou heavenly Hunter, that Thou wilt plant faith 
in our hearts, and that Thou wilt plant in these hearts true humility; that 
Thou wilt help us to see that there is only one right way to live, only one 
right way to repent, and only one right way to pray, and that is, "God be 
merciful to me a sinner." And with this spirit we pray Thine own prayer, 
Heavenly Father, which Thou hast taught us, through Thy Son : 

Our Father, who art in heaven : Hallowed be Thy name ; Thy king- 
dom come ; Thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven. Give us, this 
day, our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those 
who trespass against us. Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from 
evil ; for Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever 
and ever. Amen. 



TWELFTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. 



TWO SIDES OF SALVATION. 



Mark 7: 31-37. 



11 / J ND again, departing from the coasts of Tyre and Sidon, He came 
jj% unto the Sea of Galilee, through the midst of the coasts of De- 
capolis. And they bring unto Him one that was deaf, and had 
an impediment in his speech; and they beseech Him to put His hands upon 
him. And He took him aside from the multitude, and put His fingers 
into his ears, and He spit, and touched his tongue; and, looking up to 
heaven, He sighed, and saith unto him, Ephphatha, that is, Be opened. And 
straightway his ears were opened, and the string of his tongue was loosed, 
and he spake plain. And He charged them that they should tell no man : 
but the more He charged them, so much the more a great deal they pub- 
lished it; and were beyond measure astonished, saying, He hath done 
all things well : He maketh both the deaf to hear, and the dumb to speak." 

Sanctify us, O Lord, through Thy Truth : 
Thy Word is Truth. Amen. 



Dearly Beloved in Christ : — 

There are two questions in the minds of thinking peo- 
ple. One is: If the Lord God does everything for our sal- 
vat ion^ is man responsible if he is lost? In other words, 
if God does everything possible to save a man, and man 
of his own power can do nothing, why should he be blamed 
at last if he is lost? There is another question just as im- 
portant as this one: If man can do something toward his 
salvation, then by what authority do we say that all good 
and perfect gifts come from above? By what authority do 
we say that God only can save souls? The answer to these 
two questions will be brought out fully in the text of the 
day by noticing the two sides of salvation. May God, the 

630 



TWELFTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. 631 

Holy Spirit, help us to sec the Divine side, and the human 
side of salvation this morning. There are then 

TWO SIDES OF SALVATION. 

I. The Divine skit'. 
II. The human side. 

I. What is the Divine side of salvation? 

1. God only can create man. Man must be created be- 
fore he can be saved. The miracle of the morning is a cre- 
ation in itself. A young man who cannot speak nor hear 
is brought to the Savior; in a short time this young man 
speaks and hears, and speaks a language that the people 
understand. There is a three-fold miracle in this. A deaf 
man never learns to talk; you never saw a child born deaf 
that learned to speak. This boy could neither hear nor 
speak plainly; he had no language; and in a few moments' 
time he stands before his friends, and before God, with 
ears opened and tongue loosed, and talks a language as if 
he had studied it all his life. Language is acquired by 
years of diligent study; God gave it to this man in a mo- 
ment. Hearing is a gift of God; God gave it to this man 
in a moment. Language itself is a gift of God — speaking 
is a gift of God, and he also receives this gift in a moment. 
No other hand but the Hand that made man could possi- 
bly give this hearing and this loosened tongue and this 
language to this young man. Where is the human being, 
therefore, that would ascribe any glory to man for the won- 
derful creation that took place in this young man? 

2. Not only is creation wholly and solely the gift of God, 
but regeneration also. Only God can regenerate man. The 
Lord Jesus Christ never yet performed a miracle on a 
man's body without, at the same time, saving his soul. 
"Thy faith hath saved thee" is the common expression of 
Jesus after He has healed any one from any disease 
whatever. Regeneration, I repeat it, is wholly and solely 
the gift of God. It is called the new birth. What did you 
have to do with your own birth? Nothing. Just as little 
as a babe a day old can ascribe any glory to itself for being 
born, just so little can a child of God say, I have given 



632 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

myself the new birth. If we understand that conversation 
between Jesus of Nazareth and Nicodeinus correctly, it not 
only states that man must be born again, but he must be 
born from above. The power must come from on high that 
gives one a new life that makes him a child of God. This 
young man not only received hearing in his natural ears, 
not only received the power to speak with" his natural 
tongue, not only received a natural language to talk to the 
people, but, as a newly born man from on high, he heard 
the Word of God, he spoke to God in prayer after this; it 
could not be otherwise; he was a newly born man, and the 
glory and honor belong entirely to God. 

3. There is another feature in this lesson that must not 
be overlooked, and that is that only through His means of 
grace does God save man, as these two are brought together. 
"And they bring unto Him one that was deaf, and had an 
impediment in his speech; and they beseech Him to put His 
hands upon him. And He took him aside from the multi- 
tude, and put His fingers into his ears, and He spit, and 
touched his tongue; and, looking up to heaven, He sighed, 
and said unto him, Ephphatha, that is, be opened. And 
straightway his ears were opened, and the string of his 
tongue was loosed, and he spake plain." How does it come 
that Jesus took this young man out to one side? Hqw does 
it come that He did not give him the speech and the hear- 
ing right there in the presence of the multitude? Let us 
not forget what the apostle Paul taught us in the 10th 
chapter of Romans: a How shall they believe in Him of 
whom they have not heard? and how shall they hear with- 
out a preacher?" But how can a deaf man hear God's 
Word? That is the problem. How could the Lord God 
heal this deaf man, who had no faith in his heart, and the 
only way for faith to come into his heart is by the Word 
of God? The problem is easily solved. Jesus Christ took 
the deaf man to one side in order to talk to him in the deaf 
mute language. When a man cannot hear or speak, you 
have got to talk with signs. I have confirmed a deaf-mute 
myself, and I had to go to the trouble to learn the language 
in order to bring the Word of God to him, and there is not 
a better Lutheran in Ohio than George Faber, of Ashland 



TWELFTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. (>33 

county, — a deaf mute who knows the catechism from be- 
ginning to end, and as far as I know, never fails to go to com- 
munion, and never fails to go to church. Shame on you men 
who have ears to hear and will not go to God's house, when 
somcnien will go who cannot hear! The Lord Jesus Christ 
says this man has got to have faith in his heart, and therefore 
I must take him away from the multitude in order that I 
may have his attention. Taking him to one side, He put 
a finger in one ear, and then in the other, to show him that 
these two ears are now to hear; He took his tongue and 
spit as if to say, By means that I shall select you shall be 
healed; He takes His own finger and touches His own 
tongue, as if to say, Deaf-mute, your help must come from 
this mouth; then He touches the tongue of the deaf-mute 
as if to say, That tongue of yours shall be helped; He looks 
toward heaven to give this man to understand that help 
does not come from men but from on high. In other words, 
the Lord Jesus Christ preached a sermon to this deaf-mute 
in the sign language, to bring faith to him, in order that he 
might be healed. It is not hard for us to read between 
the lines what that sermon was. Deaf-mute, come with Me, 
away from your friends, where I can look eye to eye, and 
your attention will not be taken from Me; now, deaf-mute, 
over here is the Sea of Galilee with plenty of water in it, 
but I would have you to understand that one drop of water 
will make a baptism as well as an ocean full; I will spit 
and show you that water in the name of God will cleanse 
your sins, as I shall show to-morrow that blind man down 
at Bethesda when I put clay and spit on his eyes that 
he shall be healed; O, deaf-mute, I touch your left 
ear with My right hand, to let you know that you shall 
hear; and I touch your right ear with my left hand to let 
you know that you shall hear with both ears, for he that 
hath ears to hear, let him hear; and now I spit again to 
show you that your help must come from this tongue, and 
it must go to your tongue; and I sigh for you, for deaf- 
mute, although you have never heard and never spoken, 
you have escaped many an ungodly word; many an ungodly 
oath you never heard; many an ungodly thing that these 
others have talked about around Me, you never said, and, 



634 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

in one respect, blessed be the man that cannot hear, and 
blessed be the man that cannot speak, and yet thou hast 
a soul, and it is better for thee to be able to speak, and to 
be able to hear, and therefore I sigh for thee, and I look 
heavenward, to let thee know that there is the Father in 
heaven, who now is going to do something wonderful for 
thee. And He cried out: Ephphatha! and the ears heard it; 
Be opened — and the deaf-mute stood there, and spoke 
plain. That was all Divine; no human hand had any honor 
for what was done now for this man. He now speaks 
plainly; he now hears; he now has a language given to him 
in a moment. Oh, wonderful power of God! That is the 
Divine side of salvation — just exactly what God has done 
for you and for me; He has brought the Word of God to 
our ears; He has said to us, You are blind by nature, and 
cannot see; you are deaf by nature and will not hear; and 
your tongue will not speak in praise and prayer to Me; 
but I want your tongue to be loosed, and your ears to be 
opened. Ephphatha to all of you this morning, in the name 
of God. 

II. There is not only a Divine side to salvation, however ; 
there is also a human side. "And they bring unto Him one 
that was deaf, and had an impediment -in his speech; and 
they beseech Him to put His hands upon him." Dear 
friends, this deaf mute would never have heard, would 
never have been able to speak, would never have been 
saved, if it had not been for the Christian friends that 
brought him to Christ. Do you see the human side of sal- 
vation now? I maintain on the authority of God's Word 
that many people will be lost because we fail to bring them 
under the means of grace to Jesus Christ. I maintain that 
many people in this tvorld will be lost because we do not ac- 
company our works ivith strong prayers. I maintain that 
many people in this loorld will be lost because we Christians 
fail to give the proper praise to the Father, Son and Holy 
Ghost. 

1. I repeat it, that this young man never would have 
heard, nor been able to speak, nor would have been saved, 
if it had not been for the Christian friends that brought 
him to Christ. How does it come that in so many Chris- 



TWELFTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. 635 

tian homes you will find a husband, or a son, or even a 
daughter, who are not Christians? There are so many 
people in the present day who seem to think that salvation 
is all a work of God, and consequently it is not our fault 
if some of our own family are lost; and that is just where 
they are mistaken. There are certain things that God ex- 
pects us Christians to do, and the first is that we must 
bring the people and the means of grace together, and 
thereby bring them to Jesus Christ. Whose fault is it, 
Christian fathers and mothers, if your little babe is not 
baptized? Whose fault is it? Has that little babe ever in 
the cradle stubbornly said, "Do not take me to God?" 
Never. Did Jesus ever say, "Let that little child grow up 
like a wild weed in the garden?" No. God said, "Train up 
a child in the way he shall go, and when he is old he will 
not depart from it." He said "Suffer the little children to 
come unto Me, and forbid them not, for of such is the king- 
dom of heaven." He said in that sermon on the day of 
Pentecost that the people should repent, and believe in 
Jesus Christ, and be baptized, and that this promise was 
to them and to their children, and to them that are afar 
off, and to all who should come to Him. The whole Chris- 
tian world admits that little children can come to Christ, 
and yet thousands are not bringing them. Who is to 
blame? If you have got a child to-day in your family un- 
baptized, I say it is your fault, father, it is your fault, 
mother, and God will hold you responsible on the last great 
Judgment Day. And possibly not you half as much as the 
preachers of the Gospel who are keeping their tongues 
silent on this great question. I do not blame the church 
half as much as I do the careless preachers about these 
things. And whose fault is it that your children do not 
know the Ten Commandments, nor the Apostles' Creed, 
and do not know the doctrine concerning baptism, and the 
Lord's Supper? Those great old heroes of the Eeformation 
did not write a book out of human minds when they wrote 
the catechism, but they went into God's Word and brought 
out the very essential things that a family should teach 
to the children ; and if these people brought this deaf mute 
to the Lord Jesus Christ and had him saved, I would like 



636 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

to know why my wife and I cannot bring our children to 
the Lord Jesus Christ, through these instrumentalities to 
the means of grace. And whose fault is it if you do not 
have these children more thoroughly instructed by your 
pastor? Do not tell me that you did not have a pastor in 
this church in the past who did not want the children in- 
structed. You have not had one of them who did not want 
your children instructed in God's Word. I know what I 
am talking about. They all insisted on your having your 
sons and daughters instructed. Why did you not bring 
your son to your pastor and say, Here, show this boy the 
way to God, through the means of grace? Why did you 
not sit down beside that boy and stay with him? I tell 
you you cannot afford, for all your business, for anything 
in the world, on that great Judgment Day to have one of 
your own flesh and blood taken away from you forever. 
Salvation is worth too much for us to become careless 
about the human side of it. It is our duty, therefore, to 
bring our children to the instruction of God's Holy Word, 
and compel them, as Jesus said, to come in. 

And this goes a great deal further than the family; 
it goes out into the Christian community. Think of a 
Christian family living in a neighborhood for years and 
years, and never saying a word to neighbors that are liv- 
ing as if there were no God in heaven. I tell you it is pos- 
sible for us to bring the lost man and the Word of God 
together. That is the human side of salvation. 

And this goes beyond the confines of our own congre- 
gation and city; it goes to the ends of the world. "And 
again departing from the coasts of Tyre and Sidon, He 
came unto the Sea of Galilee, through the midst of the 
coasts of Decapolis." Do you know where Tyre and Sidon 
were? Those two ancient cities lie along the shores of the 
Mediteranean Sea. Do you know where Decapolis was? 
Decapolis in English means, the ten cities; these ten cities 
were over on the northeast shore of the Sea of Galilee. 
Jesus had just been over among the heathen driving the 
devil out of the daughter of the Syrophenician woman; 
He crossed over the Holy Land to the Sea of Galilee, and 
went over among more heathen, and there cured this deaf 



TWELFTH .SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. ()37 

mute. He went from sea to sea in order that they might 
all hear and speak, as well as see; teaching us the great 
lesson that we must also see to it that the nations of the 
cat th hear of Jesus Christ. How shall these poor heathen 
of the world ever come to Christ if we do not take the Word 
of God there, and send missionaries there, and take the 
Word of God out of the mouth of God and bring it to the 
ears of deaf mutes all over the world? I am afraid we are 
overlooking a responsibility. We are asking the question 
all the time, What becomes of little children that die un- 
baptized; and What becomes of the heathen that dies 
without knowing of Christ? Those are not the problems. 
The problem for you and me is what is going to become 
of us if we let these little infants pass into eternity without 
bringing them to the means of grace; what is going to be- 
come of us if we shirk the human responsibility in salva- 
tion? 

2. Human responsibility does not consist simply in 
bringing people to Christ through the means of grace, but 
means also that ive should ivorJc and pray for their salva- 
tion. "And they bring unto Him one that was deaf, and 
had an impediment in his speech, and they beseech Him 
to put His hands upon him." Beseech is a very strong 
w r ord; it means something more than to ask a favor; it 
means, "Lord Jesus Christ, Thou are now in the land of 
the heathen; Thou art now in a heathen city; and Thou 
mayst have come here to rest, but Thou canst never get 
away from us. Here we are with this poor deaf-mute, and 
we will not leave Thee until Thou dost lay Thy hand upon 
him and help him; we beseech, implore, supplicate Thee. 
Help him. Help him. Help him." And He did help him. 
Our prayers are entirely too cold ; our prayers are entirely 
too neglectful of other duties, of bringing them to the Sa- 
vior. A man can get down on his knees every night in his 
home and pray for the salvation of his daughter or son, 
and if he stops at that the son and daughter will likely 
never be saved. I am taught in the Lord's Prayer to pray 
for my daily bread; but if I am a farmer I might go out and 
sit in the middle of a ten-acre field from morning until 
night, or get on my knees and pray for ten hours every day 



038 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

from spring until fall, even go out at midnight and pray 
for corn, and after it was all done, I would find myself sur- 
rounded with weeds. You all understand that. But there 
is one way for me to get my daily bread in prayer. I can 
go out in that field with too good stout horses and a good 
plow, and can start up my team and say, Now, Lord God, 
give me strength to plow the first round; and then, Give me 
strength to plow another round, and keep on until the field 
is plowed; and then I can say, Help me to go over the field 
with a harrow; and when it is harrowed once I can say, 
Lord, help me to harrow another time, and get the ground 
in good condition; then, Help me to plant this corn; then 
when it is planted, I can go up and down those rows and 
say, Help me to plow it once, and again, and again, and 
keep the weeds down; I can say, Lord, give me a harvest; 
and when fall comes, I have corn; God gave it, and an- 
swered my prayers; but God does not answer a lazy man's 
prayer. The same thing you do in raising crops, you do in 
the Church of God. You can pray all you please for God 
to save the world, from morning until night, and I do not 
believe God pays attention to it. These people prayed, 
too, but they walked up to the deaf mute; they did not ask 
him whether he wanted to go; they led him to the Master; 
they did all they possibly could, and said, Here, Lord, is a 
man who cannot hear, who cannot speak; he has an im- 
pediment in his speech, and of course has no language; 
Lord God help him; and the prayer was accompanied with 
all they could do, and the blessing came. It is easy to 
apply this great truth. The thing for you to do is to go 
home and take those little children of yours, and bring 
them to the Lord Jesus; get your catechism, and your 
Bible, and read that Word of God at the table, at least 
once a day. The thing for you to do is to instruct your 
children; send them to the pastor when he calls for them, 
to be further instructed, and make the Word of God plain. 
The thing for you to do is to come with them, and if they 
run away from classes, sit down with them, put your hand 
on their collars and hold them where the Word of God 
must go into their ears, and into their souls and hearts, 
and then say, "I have done all I can do; do Thou the rest," 



TWELFTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. 639 

and those children will become Christians. Mark what I 
say. I knew a young man who one time was told by his 
mother to go to catechetical instruction. He said, "Mother, I 
will not do it," and she said, "You will do it," and 1 can see 
that boy yet going down the lane, and at every step the halter 
strap was over his back. Some people said, "That is no way 
to make a Christian." Those people did not know ; the mother 
did know what God teaches. She said, "You have got to go 
and find out things you do not know; you have got to learn; 
I send you to the public schools, and I send you to God's 
school, and you must go, whether you want to or not. 
When you have learned God's Word, if you desire to go to 
hell you can go." I attended that mother's funeral; I saw 
that boy stand at the head of the grave and weep like a 
babe — a man, a father of children. He did not say, I 
thank my God because my mother never whipped me; he 
did not say Here is a mother that never said you must go. 
In the presence of the dead, looking into that grave, he 
said, "My God, I thank Thee for that whipping that mother 
gave me." He is now a child of God, the father of a Chris- 
tian family. That is the great truth that parents in this 
day know nothing about — parental authority. Children 
must know they have no right to choose between stealing 
and not stealing; they must know they have no right to 
choose between keeping the Sabbath Day holy and not 
keeping it holy; they must know they have no right to 
choose between killing and not killing. God's holy law 
stands. Jesus said, "Think not that I am come to destroy 
the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to 
fulfill." The epistolary lesson this morning tells us that 
the law under which we Christians are was so glorious, 
oh, how much more glorious is the Gospel of Christ! If it 
was glorious for these men to bring the deaf-mute to Christ, 
how much more glorious for the deaf mute to go home 
with them, praising God! 

3. That leads me to the last thought of the text, and 
that is that we must not only bring people under the 
means of grace to Jesus; not only do our human part and 
pray earnestly after we have done all we can, but, last of 
all, as a Christian people, toe must praise God until every- 



640 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

body around us will feel it. "And straightway his ears wera 
opened, and the string of his tongue was loosed, and he 
spake plain. And He charged them that they should tell 
no man/ 7 This was not a commandment in the sense that 
if you disobey Me you do wrong. Here we have got one 
of those commandments of the Lord Jesus Christ that He 
gave so often, that simply meant when He did these things, 
He did not do them for open show; He did not do them be- 
cause people are to be saved by miracles; but He did them 
in order that the people might hear God's Word, and 
thereby be saved. "And He charged them that they should 
tell no man; but the more He charged them, so much the 
more a great deal they published it ; and were beyond meas- 
ure astonished, saying, He hath done all things well; He 
maketh both the deaf to hear, and the dumb to speak." 
When the jug is full of water you cannot pour anything 
more in but that it will run over, and just so with the 
heart, when the heart is full it will run over. The deaf- 
mute began to praise God; he could not help it. The men 
that brought him began to praise God; they could not help 
it; and when those began, all began, and there was one 
great song of praise went up from that city among the 
heathen to the Triune God, and there was a song there 
that I hope you will all sing the rest of your lives: "He 
hath done all things well: He maketh both the deaf to 
hear, and the dumb to speak." There is a power in prais- 
ing God that some people overlook. You show me a con- 
gregation that does not sing, and I will show you a con- 
gregation that is spiritually dead. You show me a congre- 
gation in which the people are not willing to take up their 
hymnbooks and praise God, and I will show you a church 
to which very few members will be added. There is a power 
in praising God that cannot be resisted. Imagine every 
member of this church with his hymnbook in his hand 
singing praise to God, and a stranger here without one — 
how would he feel? His own soul would cry out, "Oh, 
that I had a hymnbook!" "Oh, that I might help praise 
God!" And the first thing he would know he himself would 
be a child of God, spurring on somebody else to help praise 
God. I am told we have the very best congregational sing- 



TWELFTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. 641 

ing in the city; 1 do not know whether it is trne or not; 
yon know it better than I; but one thing is sure, no differ- 
ence how good it is, it is not half as good yet as it ought 
to be; there are too many sitting down yet to be enter- 
tained. Let me ask you this morning, Why not buy a hymn- 
book? Why not spend one dollar and ten cents, and take 
your hymn-book and help praise God, and say, "He hath 
done all things well: He maketh both the deaf to hear 
and the dumb to speak." The very first Sunday that you 
get that new hymnal you ought to sing this verse, a He is 
making the dumb to speak now; yes, making the dumb to 
speak." You thought this morning that the deaf-mute 
was to be pitied. Not any more than you, sitting down 
there with the tongue that God gave you to speak, and you 
never use it to praise God with power. Praise Him with 
your soul. Praise Him with the timbrel and the dance. 
Let everything that hath breath praise the Lord. There 
are some churches in which you can hardly get a choir. 
I do wish to thank my choir publicly this morning for their 
loyalty and for their willingness to help praise God and 
help the congregation to praise Him. There are churches 
in which you can hardly get a choir together. The moment 
that one can sing a little he will sit back as if to say, Now I 
am going to see if they can get along without me. The mo- 
ment he can sing a little more than a little, he wants to know 
how much pay he can get. God pity a Christian like that ! 
God pity the poor mute that will not talk unless he is paid 
for it! This deaf-mute was so thankful that now he could 
hear, that now he could speak, that now he had a language, 
that even a command from God Almighty could not keep his 
mouth shut any more. He praised God. And so I say to 
you all this morning, Loosen up your tongues and praise 
God, and thereby bring others to praise Him. That is one 
of the human sides of salvation, 

How does it come that one deaf-mute will be saved and 
another not? We have heard of the Divine side of salva- 
tion, and the human side, but we have said nothing so far 
about the subject himself to be saved. How does it come 
that one man will be saved and another will not? It is 
not God's fault if anybody will not be saved, for He sent 

41 



642 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

His Gospel to the whole world and said, "Him that conieth 
unto Me I will in no wise cast out;" "Come unto Me all ye 
that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give thee rest;" 
"God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten 
Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, 
but have everlasting life." So you see it never can be God's 
fault if any one is lost. On the oflier hand, if the Chris- 
tian Church does its duty and brings the Gospel to the 
world, you cannot blame the Church; but what about the 
man that hears the Gospel, and yet will not be saved; an- 
other does hear, and he will be saved. Why does one deaf- 
mute have his tongue loosed, and another not? Why does 
one man accept Christ and another not? Jesus can answer 
the problem better than I can. When He stood before 
Jerusalem He wept like a child and said, "O Jerusalem, 
Jerusalem, which killest the prophets, and stonest them 
that are sent unto thee; how often would I have gathered 
thy children together, as a hen doth gather her brood under 
her wings, and ye would not!" Ye would not! Paul in 
one of his epistles calls some people "stiffnecked," stub- 
born. That is the only answer. Why one man will hear 
the Gospel and accept it, and another be so stubborn as to 
reject it, I cannot understand, and it was enough to make 
God weep. If this deaf-mute had refused to go with these 
men, he would not have heard; he would not have been 
saved ; and even when he went with them, if the Lord Jesus 
Christ had said to him, Come on with Me to one side; if 
he had refused to stand to one side he never would have 
heard; he never would have spoken. The reason he heard, 
and the reason he spoke, was because he obeyed and ac- 
cepted the Savior. And now I say to you this morning, 
Avhoever you may be, if you are ever lost it is not God's 
fault. And I will tell you another thing; if you are lost 
it is not going to be my fault. If you are lost after this 
morning it is going to be your own fault. "He that believ- 
eth and is baptized shall be saved; and he that believeth 
not shall be damned." That word will settle your judg- 
ment forever. 



TWELFTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. G43 

"Life is the time to serve the Lord, 
The time to insure the great reward ; 
And while the lamp holds out to burn 
The vilest sinner may return. 

"Life is the hour that God has given 
To 'scape from hell, and fly to heaven ; 
The day of grace, and mortals may 
Secure the blessings of the day. 

"Then what my thoughts design to do, 
My hands, with all your might pursue; 
Since no device, nor work is found, 
Nor faith, nor hope, beneath the ground. 

"There are no acts of pardon passed 
In the cold grave to which we haste ; 
But darkness, death and long despair 
Reign in eternal darkness there." 

Amen. 
PRAYER. 

O God, our Heavenly Father: We thank Thee for Thy great love to us, 
that has brought us into the world, and has given us the Holy Spirit to regen- 
erate us, and brings Thy means of grace as the only means through which 
Thou dost operate on us for our salvation. We thank Thee that Thou hast 
given us work to do, and that is to bring those that are not saved, as well as 
ourselves, in direct connection with Thy means of grace, the Word of 
God and the Holy Sacraments. We thank Thee, Heavenly Father, that 
Thou hast given us the privilege to come and do all we can with our hands 
to bring the lost to Thee to be saved,- and hast given us the direct command 
that we shall pray and beseech Thee for their salvation. We ask Thee 
that our prayers may be accompanied with diligent work. We pray. Thee 
to help us also to sing songs of praise, that every one around us may 
know that we are in earnest about bringing them to Him, the Father, Son 
and Holy Ghost. O Thou Lamb of God that takest away the sins of the 
world, we ask Thee to comfort all that are truly mourning for their sins. 
We pray Thee that Thou wilt make the house of God the abode of all of 
us. Help us all to say with Tkine own Psalmist : "One thing have I de- 
sired of the Lord, that will I seek after; that I may dwell in the house 
of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord, 
and to enquire in His temple." Wipe away all tears, and to-day put into 
our hearts joy in Thee and in Thy service. Help us to remember, O God, 
that Thou hast not saved us to be nothings, but somethings, and that these 
somethings should do something for the salvation of others. Llear this, 
our prayer, for the sake of Jesus, who taught us to pray : 

Our Father, who art in heaven : Hallowed be Thy name ; Thy king- 
dom come ; Thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven. Give us, this 
day, our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those 
who trespass against us. Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from 
evil ; for Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever 
and ever. Amen. 



THIRTEENTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY 



THE LORD'S LODGE. 



Luke 10 : 23-27. 



H 



ii \ ff ND He turned Him unto His disciples, and said privately, Blessed 
are the eyes which see the things that ye see. For I tell you 
that many prophets and kings have desired to see those things 
which ye see, and have not seen them; and to hear those things which ye 
hear, and have not heard them. And, behold, a certain lawyer stood up, 
and tempted Him, saying, Master, what shall I do to inherit eternal life? 
He said unto him, What is written in the law? how readest thou? And 
he answering said, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, 
and with all thy soul, and will all thy strength, and with all thy mind; and 
thy neighbor as thyself. And He said unto him, Thou hast answered 
right: this do, and thou shalt live. But he, willing to justify himself, 
said unto Jesus, And who is my neighbor? And Jesus answering said, 
A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among 
thieves, which stripped him of his raiment, and wounded him, and de- 
parted, leaving him half dead. And by chance there came down a certain 
priest that way: and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. 
And likewise a Levite, when he was at the place, came and looked on him, 
and passed by on the other side. But a certain Samaritan, as he journeyed, 
came where he was : and when he saw him, he had compassion on him, 
and went to him, and bound up his wounds, pouring in oil and wine, and 
set him on his own beast, and brought him to an inn, and took care of 
him. And on the morrow when he departed, he took out two pence, and 
gave them to the host, and said unto him, Take care of him ; and what- 
soever thou spendest more, when I come again I will repay thee. Which 
now, of these three, thinkest thou, was neighbor unto^ him that fell among 
the thieves? And he said, He that shewed mercy on him. Then said Jesus 
unto him, Go, and do thou likewise." 

Sanctify us, O Lord, through Thy Truth : 
Thy Word is Truth. Amen. 



Bear Christian Friends : — 

"Prove all things: hold fast that which is good," is a 
plain word of God, a principle that every wise man will 

644 



THIRTEENTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. 645 

adopt. No wise man would claim it is unwise to prove 
things first, and then hold them fast, after they have been 
found to be good; on the contrary, it is wise if you do not 
find them to be good, to let go. There are many things in 
this world to be tried, and there are some things that it is 
claimed cannot be proved by us. 

It is not my purpose to-day to speak on the question 
that I spoke on just a year ago. It is not my purpose to 
dwell this morning on what is generally known in the world 
as the lodge, but, for the benefit of those who might want to 
investigate that matter, I would like to give you just three 
rules. In case you want to prove the lodge at any time you 
can do that in three different ways. One way is to join 
them — that is the poor way; then there is a good way, 
and that is to read their expositions; and a still better way 
is to make a careful study of all their manuals. 

I say the first way is a poor way, for two reasons : In the 
first place, you have to foreswear yourself before you can go 
in, and that is a thing the Bible forbids, and I could never 
do it; secondly, after you have joined one lodge you do not 
know anything about the other nine hundred and ninety- 
nine, and life is too short to join them all; and after you 
have passed two or three different degrees of certain lodges 
you do not know anything about the higher degrees, and you 
are still a babe. That is the poor way of proving the lodge. 

There is a good way. There are thousands of good men 
— good Christian men — who have joined these different 
organizations, and at least to them it has been a matter of 
principle whether they could remain in or not, and so have 
gone out; and some have felt it to be their bounden duty to 
their brother men and to God to conscientiously expose the 
thing; others claim the expositions are not true; there are 
some, however, who claim they are true, and they are living 
yet. I can bring men here to Mansfield in twenty-four hours 
who have belonged to the greatest and best lodges in the 
world; and they will tell you plainly that they have been 
grand masters; and they will tell you that they have come 
out for conscience' sake, and that these expositions are true. 
Whether they are or not, there is one way of studying the 
question to prove them, to see whether they are true or not. 



646 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

There is, however, a way I think a great deal better — a 
way every lodge man in the world will highly commend, and 
that is the fair and honest way. Study the principles they 
lay down; those are not secrets. For instance, if you want 
to know Masonry, send for Mackey's Manual. It is a con- 
fession, just as the Augsburg Confession or the Lutheran 
Catechism would be of the Lutheran Church. It lays down 
the principles. What do we oare about the initiation se- 
crets? The real thing we warft to know is, What are the 
principles? Are they right or wrong? You can get the 
manual of any lodge. I am no Mason, but I have their man- 
ual. You can get all these manuals, and the principles of 
these orders are taught ; I can spend twenty-five dollars and 
get a manual of all the lodges, and can study them a great 
deal quicker than you can join three of them. So the best 
way of studying the question is simply to read the manuals 
of the lodge, which they themselves publish, and publish as 
the correct truths which they maintain. 

But my object is not to speak on these questions; I am 
going to prove something else, and that is the lodge to which 
I belong. People ask me, What do you belong to? and I 
answer, The Lodge of the Lord, and that is none other than 
the Lutheran Church. Nearly every lodge manual has the 
beautiful story of the Good Samaritan in it, and for that 
reason I have chosen my theme — 



I love this Lodge of the Lord for two reasons : 
I. / love her secrets. 
II. i" love her charity. 

I. I love her secrets. Some people think the Church of 
God has no secrets. Oh, yes, she has. She has three secrets 
that I wish the whole world had : Secret prayer; the secret 
of her Gospel, and the secret of her lata. 

1. The secret of -prayer, first of all. Just before our 
text we find these words : "In that hour Jesus rejoiced in 
spirit, and said, I thank Thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and 






THIRTEENTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. <>17 

earth, that Thou hast hid these things from the wise end 
prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes: even so, father, 
for so it seeineth good in Thy sight." You see, then, that 
there is such a thing as great truths not revealed to wise 
men, but known by the babes — the saved ones in Christ 
Jesus. Prayer itself is one of those secrets. If you read in 
i he sixth chapter of Matthew, the Sermon on the Mount, you 
will find, "But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy 
closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father 
which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret 
shall reward thee openly." Secret prayer is the great secret 
in the Lord's Lodge. It is not a prayer that men make by 
standing up in public and making a speech to heaven; it is 
not the prayer a man makes before a large congregation, or 
before an assemblage of people ; the prayer that I have refer- 
ence to is the prayer that a true member of God's Church 
makes as often as he possibly can, in his own little closet, all 
alone, with the door shut. "When thou prayest, enter into 
thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy 
Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in 
secret shall reward thee openly." Oh, the secret of secret 
prayer! I believe there are hundreds of professed Chris- 
tians who know nothing about this secret. I believe there 
are people going up and down the earth calling themselves 
Christians, who do not have family worship, who go on for 
hours at a time and never think of God at all. The secret of 
the Church of God, the Lodge of the Lord, is that prayer 
that you want to offer away from your wife, away from your 
children, away from every man on earth. Oh, if it were 
possible, away from the angels of God. There are prayers 
that the Christian can offer that he would not want his wife 
to hear, that he would not want his most intimate friend on 
earth to hear. There are secrets of the Christian heart that 
we want to pour out alone to God, alone in His presence, with 
nothing around us but the walls, and the door locked. Such 
secrets God loves. Such secrets make men powers. What 
made Knox such a wonderful power in Scotland? What 
made Dr. Luther such a power in the days of the Keforma- 
tion? It was their dwelling in their closets, alone with 



648 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

r God, that brought them out with the host of angels around 
them, sent from the throne on high, to overcome every power 
that might resist them. 

2. Then there is the secret of the Gospel. The average 
man, when he reads this Word, sees nothing in it but the 
beautiful story of the Samaritan. I would have you to 
understand that the Gospel has some secrets that some pro- 
fessed Christians know nothing about. Nicodemus was a 
wise man, a ruler, a man well acquainted with the Holy 
Scriptures of the Old Testament, a teacher of the law, an 
expounder of right and wrong, and yet, when he came to the 
Savior that midnight hour with the question in his heart, 
different from the question of his mouth, What shall I do 
to be saved? Christ said, "Except a man be born again, he 
cannot see the kingdom of God." That was a secret to 
Nicodemus. "How can these things be? How can a man 
be born again when he is old?" "Verily, verily, I say unto 
thee, Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he 
cannot enter into the kingdom of God." In other words, 
Nicodemus, you are a doctor of laws, you are a member of 
the Supreme Court of Jerusalem, but I would have you to 
know that there is a secret of the Gospel that you know 
nothing about. "As Moses lifted up the serpent in the 
wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that who- 
soever believeth in Him should not perish, but have eternal 
life." Here, Nicodemus, is the secret, "God so loved the 
world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever 
believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting 
life." And now the Holy Spirit comes and gives you the 
new birth by Holy Baptism; then you have got a new life 
that you know nothing about to-day; so do not say, "How 
can these things be?" "The wind bloweth where it listeth, 
and thou nearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence 
it cometh and whither it goeth : so is every one that is born 
of the Spirit." So it is with this secret, the new birth. 

In the Lord's lodge a man must be born again before he 
can see or enter the kingdom of heaven. In the Lord's 
lodge he must know who this Samaritan is. I said a while 
ago that the average man reads this story and thinks what 
a wonderful man that Samaritan was, and now I am going 



THIRTEENTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. (>1!) 

to be a Samaritan, and yet you never found him on earth, 
did you? Talk all you please about this Good Samaritan, I 
wish you would find him for me. Where is he? I have at 
different times in preaching sermons alluded to some mem- 
bers of different churches that I thought were about as per- 
fect as the}- could be on earth, and Monday evening would 
not come until somebody would come and tell me the many 
bad things they did. Whenever you go to holding a man up 
as the Good Samaritan, you will see he cannot be found. 
What is the secret? I will tell you the secret. This man 
that was lying down there by the roadside half dead was 
you, and am I, robbed of our raiment, because we have no 
righteousness, wounded and robbed by the devil, left lying 
spiritually half dead; the preacher and the leaders of the 
church come and look at us ; they cannot help us ; they pass 
by; along comes the Good Samaritan, not a member of any 
church on earth, not a member of any lodge on earth — it is 
Jesus Christ, the Son of God, with Hi's means of grace ? pour- 
ing His oil into our wounds, wrapping them up with the 
garment of His own righteousness ; lifting us up in His arms, 
carrying us back into His lodge, into His Church; giving 
two pence to the minister of the Gospel, the host, to use these 
two pence — Baptism and the Lord's Supper- — and take 
care of the man, and He will be back; He is going to come 
and judge the quick and the dead; He will pay the whole 
debt. There is the Good Samaritan, Jesus Christ, and that 
is the secret of God's lodge that I love; and this secret is 
contained in these words of our text : "And He turned Him 
unto His disciples, and said privately, Blessed are the eyes 
which see the things that ye see: for I tell you that many 
prophets and kings have desired to see those things which 
ye see, and have not seen them; and to hear those things 
which ye hear, and have not heard them." 

3. It is not only the secrets of the Gospel that I love in 
the Lord's lodge, but I also love the secrets of her law. 
"And, behold, a certain lawyer stood up, and tempted Him, 
saying, Master, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?" He 
said unto him, "What is written in the law? How readest 
thou?" And he answering, said, "Thou shalt love the Lord 
thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with 



650 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

all thy strength, and with all thy mind ; and thy neighbor as 
thyself." And He said unto him, "Thou hast answered 
right : this do, and tl^ou shalt live." But he, willing to 
justify himself, said unto Jesus, "And who is my neighbor?" 
And then the Savior goes on and tells him the story of the 
Samaritan. He was a lawyer, well-versed in the law; he 
knew the sum and substance of the Ten Commandments in a 
few words perfectly. No man could have given a more in- 
telligent answer to the Savior's questions than that young 
lawyer did, and yet, with all his knowledge and wisdom 
there was a secret about that law that he knew nothing of. 
He put the question to the Savior: What shall I do to 
inherit eternal life? The poor soul thought he could earn 
salvation himself. Jesus said, "What does the law say?" 
Well, he went on and told Him just what the law said. Jesus 
said, "Go and do this, and you shall be saved." But, mark 
well, Jesus did not say, You can do this, because He knew he 
could not ; but the poor lawyer thought he could, and in 
order to show him the secret of the law He tells him the 
beautiful story of the Samaritan. When the lawyer began 
to ask himself the question, Do I love my neighbor as myself? 
he began to think, Who is my neighbor? I have treated this 
man all right, and that man all right, but there is one man I 
have not treated all right, and I wonder if he is my neighbor. 
Lord, who is my neighbor? Then Jesus told the beautiful 
story of the Samaritan, and showed that an enemy, an enemy 
whom we naturally hate and would rather drive the dagger 
to his heart than to lift him up, is our neighbor. He showed 
the lawyer the secret of the law, and that is this, that the law 
is perfect and man is imperfect, and an imperfect man has 
never been able to keep a perfect law of God, and conse- 
quently is a sinner and cannot be saved by his own power, 
cannot inherit eternal life. The secret of the law is this, 
that it is perfect, and condemns the imperfect man, and 
drives him down to the roadside, robbed of his raiment, 
wounded, helpless ; then comes the Good Samaritan — Jesus 
Christ — and picks him up, and says, The Son of Man is 
come to seek and to save that which was lost, and that is the 
secret of the law. That is the secret that God has in His 
lodge, that man finds himself condemned by the holy law, 



THIRTEENTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. 651 

and, finding himself condemned, accepts the only Savior, 
Jesus Christ; then he has the Gospel, and that is the second 
secret; then he prays in secret and that is the first, and he 
lias the three degrees of the Lord's lodge — secret prayer, 
secret Gospel, secret law, a saved man. That is why I love 
the Lord's lodge. 

II. Then I love her also because of her charity. The 
Samaritan Himself is the Grand Master, and this Grand 
Master never charges one cent for all he does. I often won- 
der how you men who belong to orders, and profess to be 
Christians, are satisfied with a man standing up in the lodge, 
calling himself the High Priest, or Supreme Ruler. How do 
you stand that, when the Word of God plainly teaches there 
is only one God, and He is the Supreme Ruler? How can 
you stand it for a poor mortal man, possessed with heart 
disease, perhaps, calling himself the Supreme Ruler, the. 
Eminent Ruler and the High Priest? How do you stand it? 
How does a preacher stand that? My friends, the only 
Grand Master that I know of in the world is the Lord Jesus 
Christ — this Good Samaritan; and the reason that I love 
the Lord's lodge in the world is because of its charity. 

1. These grand masters of these older lodges get pretty 
good pay, but my Grand Master left all the wealth of heaven ; 
He came down on earth, and was so poor that He slept in a 
little crib at Bethlehem; He did not wear one of your uni- 
forms that cost hundreds of dollars. No, He slept in a little 
crib, on a little hay. This Grand Master of mine, of the 
Grand Lodge of God's Church, I find was walking around 
on earth, working for thirty-three years ; I find, furthermore, 
that for three years He had a wonderful battle with Satan, 
during His ministry; furthermore, that He was so poor at 
one time that He said, "The foxes have holes, and the birds 
of the air have nests, but the Son of Man (the Grand Mas- 
ter) hath not where to lay His head." I find, furthermore, 
that not a day He spent as a lazy Grand Master; He was 
working so hard that He came home from one battle with a 
hole through His right hand, another through His left hand, 
with his pierced breast and bleeding feet; and I find He 
came back after three days in the grave, and had conquered 
death; He came back, and was so poor that when He started 



652 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

home He opened His wounded hands, and, with hands empty 
and feet wounded, He started upward and never took a cent 
for anything He did throughout all His history to save the 
world. That is the Grand Master whose charity I love. 

2. Not only do I love her charity, but I love the charity 
that exhibits itself in receiving members who are not able 
to pay their initiation or their dues. Suppose to-night i 
step up to a worldly lodge, and ask the question, "Is this an 
institution of charity?" "Yes," is the reply. "Good; I have 
an applicant for membership." "Bring him up!" "I can't; 
he is a colored man, lying down along the road. The rob- 
bers took all his money and his clothing, and nearly killed 
him ; he is half dead. Can't you come and get him, and take 
care of him?" "Oh, no! In the first place, we cannot re- 
ceive colored men into this lodge, and, in the next place, he 
must be a well man who can make a living, and has some 
money to pay his initiation and dues." "Oh, yes, I see now ; 
you are a charitable institution that needs charity, and pays 
thirty cents benefits for every dollar you receive." Why are 
secret societies not honest enough plainly to tell the world 
that they are selfish institutions, showing more charity to 
their well-paid officers than to the poor dupes who lose all 
thej paid in because they could not keep up their dues? The 
worldly lodges imagine they have the Samaritan spirit when 
the fact is that the half-dead man, without garments or 
money, could not become a member, and they know it. Am I 
wrong? Let me quote from the constitution of one of our 
local lodges : "An applicant for membership must believe 
in the existence of a Supreme Being, Creator, Preserver and 
Governor of all things; he must be a free white person, of 
good moral character, industrious habits, and possessed of 
some known reputable means of support, and free from all 
infirmity or disease." That poor fellow at Jericho would 
not stand any chance. One thing sure, he was not free from 
infirmity ; he could not earn a living ; the man was half dead. 
In other words I am only stating what you know to be true, 
that that man could not become a member of any lodge in 
Mansfield. Hoav about the Lord's lodge? The Lord Jesus 
Christ, the Good Samaritan, goes and finds the man lying 
there half dead; he has not got a penny to his name; he has 



THIRTEENTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. 653 

been robbed; he has not got any clothing on his back; robbed 
of his raiment; he has not enough health and strength to 
earn a dollar. He picks him up; puts him on His beast of 
burden; He leads the beast of burden with one hand, and 
holds the poor dying man with the other; takes him to the 
little inn; lays him down; cares for him; pays his bill; calls 
the host and says, Take care of this man, and if he needs any 
more I will come back and help him. He is a member of 
the Lord's lodge, and I love that lodge because of its charity. 

3. That is not all. I love the Lord's lodge not only 
because a man can become a member whether he is worth a 
cent or not, but because of the great benefits which he re- 
ceives, though he is not able to be a member. The real truth 
of it is that this man lying along the roadside of Jericho was 
not a Samaritan; he did not belong to the order of this 
Good Samaritan — simply a poor, helpless, lost man. What 
does He receive? He receives the tender care of the Good 
Samaritan; he receives two pence to take care of him; he 
receives the services of the Lord's lodge, just because he can- 
not pay his dues. You are a member of a lodge, are you not? 
And you have been paying dues for twenty- five years, and 
you get sick and cannot earn a dollar ; you say to your good 
wife, I guess we will have to give up paying dues to the lodge ; 
and in about six months you lie down and die ; if that lodge 
consists of good members of the Lord's lodge, they will help 
the widow, but if not, she does not get a cent; just because 
you could not pay your dues, and ought to have help, you do 
not get it. These lodge members who own their own homes 
and have money in the bank do not need help. Who is it 
needs charity? It is the poor, poor man that cannot earn 
enough clothing for his back; he is the man that needs 
charity. 

And so, after all, when you want to find true charity you 
have to go to the Lord's lodge. There you find a rich Grand 
Master, that owns heaven and earth; He will take care of 
the poor; there you will find rich members that receive the 
means of grace, and thereby have strength for the battle. 
You may say. Where is the Lord's lodge? W T here do you find 
a church doing these things? I am ashamed to acknowledge 
you will not find her very often. That is one thing the 



654 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

Church of God has overlooked these years, and it is time we 
are looking out a little further. The great trouble with too 
many people is they are looking at things through rye straws 
instead of looking out. We have lodge members so little 
that they cannot see anything but a man belonging to their 
own lodge ; we have Church members so narrow that they can- 
not see anybody except those belonging to their own church. 
There is a man in this city who knows me well, who, just 
because I have the conviction of speaking my opinion, passes 
me every day and never sees me, because I said something 
about his lodge. I pity him ; I pity a man who does not have 
more charity than that. I love every man on earth, no dif- 
ference who he is; I do not love him with a natural love, 
but with God's lore in my heart; and what I would like to 
urge upon the Christian Church in the present day is this: 
Don't stay out of church because you are poor. Come in. 
Come in, if you are not worth a cent; if you cannot wear 
good clothes, come with your poor clothes; come into the 
house of God and when you go out, don't ask a man whether 
he belongs to my church, don't ask whether he has the same 
faith ; when you see a man, black or white, rich or poor, in 
trouble, help him out — for God's sake, help him out. That 
is manhood; that is true Christianity. That is the thing I 
love about the Lord's lodge. 

And I love her vows, too. It is true the Lord's lodge does 
not ask a man to take an oath that he will not expose what 
she teaches. The real truth of it is the Lord's lodge asks a 
man to come in first and study her doctrines carefully, and, 
after studying, if he does not accept them, he will not become 
a member ; he will go right out ; but when he does accept this 
truth he becomes a member, and when he accepts the truth 
he does make a vow; he takes no oath, such as we find in 
some lodges, but he does make a vow, and it is a beautiful 
vow, and I love that. As some of you may not know it, I am 
going to read you the vow a good Lutheran takes. After 
being thoroughly instructed in the plan of salvation, as con- 
fessed in the Augsburg Confession and as taught in the Lu- 
theran catechism; after accepting Jesus as his only Savior, 
willing to be confirmed, or, if never baptized, to be baptized, 
these questions are put to him : 



THIRTEENTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. 655 

"I ask you, in the presence of the Omniscient God, do you 
renounce the devil, and all his works and ways?" 

"Yes, we renounce." 

"Do you believe in God the Father, who has created you; 
and in Jesus Christ, God's only begotten Son, who has re- 
deemed you ; and in God the Holy Ghost, who has sanctified 
you?" 

"Yes, we believe." 

"Do you promise anew to believe, live and die, according 
to the will and Word of the Triune God, Father Son and 
Holy Ghost, and therefore to remain faithful to the Confes- 
sion of the Evangelical Lutheran Church until death?" 

"Yes, by the help of God." 

Then the pastor lays his hand on the head of the con- 
firmed, and says : 

"Keceive the Holy Spirit, to protect and defend you 
against all evil ; to strengthen and help you in all good, from 
the merciful hand of the Father, and of the Son, and of the 
Holy Ghost. Amen." 

And that makes him a member of the Evangelical Luther- 
an Church — of the Lord's lodge — and he expects to be 
faithful until he breathes his last breath, and then go home 
to God. 

Somebody may say, Isn't that a little narrow? Narrow? 
I will tell you just how narrow it is. It is just as narrow 
as the Triune God, and just as wide as the world. That is 
the vow that I took when thirteen years of age, and I have 
studied the Word of God ever since, preached it for eighteen 
years, and God has blessed my ministry, and I want to keep 
that vow until I die, and I want to urge every man on earth 
to come into the Lord's lodge, the Church of God, to receive 
the two pence — Holy Baptism and the Lord's Supper — and 
depend simply upon the rich Grand Master, the Good Sama- 
ritan, who picks him up, and asks him to be faithful until 
death, and at last, receive the crown of eternal life. This 
is true Christianity. May God bless it to your eternal good, 
is my prayer. Amen. 



656 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 



PRAYER. 

We a^k Thy divine blessing upon this word of Truth given to these 
people, and to my own soul, through Thy servant. We pray Thee, O 
God, that Thou wilt help us all to study more Thy Holy Word, that we 
may live right and do right, nor live for the world, but on that Narrow 
Way that leads to heaven ; and that our convictions may be as narrow 
as the true and living God, and as wide as the world. We pray Thee, O 
God, to bless every one in this house. Give us the right disposition of 
mind and the right disposition of heart. Help us to love the truth as it is 
in Jesus Christ above everything. Hear this, our prayer, for Christ's sake, 
who taught us to pray : 

Our Father, who art in heaven : Hallowed be Thy name ; Thy king- 
dom come ; Thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven. Give us, this 
day, our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those 
who trespass against us. Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from 
evil; for Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever 
and ever. Amen. 



FOURTEENTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. 



THE MEN, THE MASTER AND THE MAN. 



Luke 17: 11-19. 



H 



il \ ff ND it came to pass, as He went to Jerusalem, that He passed 
through the midst of Samaria and Galilee. And as He entered 
into a certain village, there met Him ten men that were lepers, 
which stood afar off: and they lifted up their voices, and said Jesus, Master, 
have mercy on us. And when He saw them, He said unto them, Go, shew 
yourselves unto the priests. And it came to pass, that, as they went, they were 
cleansed. And one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, 
and with a loud voice glorified God, and fell down on his face at His feet, 
giving Him thanks : and he was a Samaritan. And Jesus answering said, 
Were there not ten cleansed? but where are the nine? There are not found 
that returned to give glory to God, save this stranger. And He said unto 
him, Arise, go thy way ; thy faith hath made thee whole. '* 

Sanctify us, O Lord, through Thy Truth : 
Thy Word is Truth. Amen. 



Beloved in Christ : — 

The world's greatest need to-day is true Christians. 
The world needs Christian wives and mothers, Christian 
women. Any one who has a Christian home knows what 
a Christian woman in that home means, and God pity the 
home that has not a Christian wife in it. 

The world not only needs Christian women, but it needs 
Christian children. If this world is to be Christian for 
fifty years to come, it is time that we were paying more 
attention to the Christian training of our little children. 

Xot only does it need Christian children, but it needs 
Christian men. Our text to-day deals exclusively with 
men, the Master, and the man, and it is my intention, as 
God shall help me this morning, to show you what the Holy 
Spirit means to convey to us in this great theme 

42 657 



658 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 



THE MEN, THE MASTER AND THE MAN. 

"And it came to pass, as He went to Jerusalem, that He 
passed through the midst of Samaria and Galilee. And as 
He entered into a certain village, there met Him ten men 
that were lepers." 

I. I call your attention first of all, then, to the men. 

1. Some men are moral lepers. What is a leper? I choose 
to find the answer this morning from men who have stood on 
the ground and faced lepers. There are still countries in 
which there are man} 7 lepers, and no man has seen more 
lepers and studied their character more than Gen. Lew 
Wallace, and Thompson, who gave us "The Land and the 
Book." Many of you have read that "Tale of the Christ," 
"Ben Hur." Do you remember Lew Wallace's description 
of the lepers? Let me just read you two paragraphs: 

"To be a leper was to be treated as dead — to be ex- 
cluded from the city as a corpse; to be spoken to by the 
best loved and most loving only at a distance; to dwell 
with none but lepers; to be utterly unprivileged; to be 
denied the rights of the Temple and synagogue; to go about 
in rent garments and with covered mouth, except when 
crying, 'Unclean, unclean!' To find home in the wilder- 
ness or in abandoned tombs; to become a materialized spec- 
tre of Hinnom and Gehenna; to be at all times less a living 
offence to others than a grieving torment to self; afraid to 
die, yet without hope except in death." 

Describing the mother and her daughter who for eight 
years were prisoners, he says of them: 

"Slowly, steadily, with horrible certainty, the disease 
spread, after a while bleaching their heads white, eating 
holes in their lips and eyelids, and covering their bodies 
with scales; then it fell to their throats, shrilling their 
voices, and to their joints, hardening the tissues and car- 
tileges — slowly, and, as the mother well knew past rem- 
edy, it was affecting their lungs and arteries, and bones, 
at each advance making the sufferers more and more loath- 
some; and so it would continue until death, which might 
be years before them." 



FOURTEENTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. 659 

Dr. Thompsoon in his famous work, "The Land and the 
Book/ 7 speaks of lepers in the East, and says, "The hair 
falls from the head and eyebrows; the nails loosen, decay 
and drop off; joint after joint of the fingers and toes shrink 
up and slowly fall away. The gums are absorbed, and the 
teeth disappear. The nose, the eyes, the tongue, and the 
palate are slowly consumed. This disease turns a man into 
a mass of loathsomeness, a walking pile of pests. Leprosy 
is nothing better than a horrible and lingering death." 

Such is the description of these ten men, by men who 
have seen the lepers face to face, and, as we look over our 
own country, do we not find men who show in their very 
faces that they are moral lepers? The pulpit is too pure 
even to describe the sins of some men in our own city. There 
is a decaying flesh upon their bones, all the result of a hor- 
rible sin well known. ■ 

2. Not only is it true that many men are moral lepers, 
but it is true that all men and all mankind are born spir- 
itual lepers. The -leper, as you well know, was a man 
who had an incurable disease; dared not associate with his 
fellow men; was excluded from even the Temple of God, 
and was, in the eyes of all men, a picture of sin. Never 
has sin brought about a worse disease than leprosy, called 
incurable by all the best physicians. Only God could help. 
And isn't it true that you and I were born in sin? Isn't it 
true that our sin, in God's sight, in the holy eyes of God, 
is leprosy? And yet, many men in the present day are 
perfectly satisfied, it seems, to live in the same sinful con- 
dition in which they were born. Oh, men! beware that you 
do not remain moral lepers. 

3. We find that they are not only moral lepers, and 
that they are born lepers, but we find that men as a rule 
will do all in their power to regain physical health. Shall 
we find fault with them for this? No. But how many 
men there are who would not spend a dollar on their sick 
wives, who would go to little trouble for their sick chil- 
dren, who would travel over land and sea to regain their 
own health. We have here the picture of ten men that did 
not hesitate to do wonders in order to get health. They 
had the horrible disease of leprosy. Jews and Gentiles 



660 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

associated together, for one was a Samaritan, and nine of 
them were Jews; they not only associated themselves to- 
gether, but they went to the village and waited for the 
Lord Jesus Christ, and cried unto Him; in opposition to all 
law they drew near the village, and said, "Jesus, Master, 
have mercy on us," and when the Lord Jesus Christ told 
them to go and show themselves to the priests, it is re- 
markable what a faith these ten men showed. I say they 
showed it, The law was to go to the priests in order to be 
declared clean. These men felt that they were not clean 
for they were still lepers; they not only felt that they were 
still lepers, every one man saw nine others- around him, 
with his own eyes, who were lepers, but when the Lord 
Jesus told them to go and show themselves to the priests, 
the} 7 knew that to show themselves to the priests meant 
to be clean, and that therefore the thing for them to do was 
to go, in spite of their own feelings, and in spite of their 
own eyesight. So, contrary to their own senses, they started 
to get well. In other words, men will do anything to get 
well themselves, even if they do let their families, perish. 
We do not particularly hold this up as a fault, except that 
love sometimes to others is not shown as it should be by 
men. 

4. We not only find that men will do these things that 
I have mentioned, but we see men as a rule are perfectly 
willing to get rid of their own superiors. When these ten 
men were walking toward Jerusalem, and they discovered 
all at once that they were clean, one started back after 
Christ — this one was a Samaritan; this one was far su- 
perior to all the other nine; Jesus Christ holds him up as 
an example, as a stranger, and yet as a man who gave glory 
to God, and the nine did not; but you do not hear one word 
by the nine saying, "Come on with us, we cannot get along 
without thee." Xo. Nine men were perfectly willing to 
get rid of the Samaritan; perfectly willing that he should 
go back, and the} 7 would again be nine Jews together. In 
other words, those nine Jews are a picture of professional 
men all over the world. There are nine doctors in every 
large city perfectly willing that the tenth, who is the best, 
should die; nine school teachers Mn every school are per- 






FOURTEENTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. 0G1 

fectly willing that the tenth, who is the best, should pass 
away; there are nine preachers in every county who would 
not be sorry if the tenth should die. You will find this 
jealousy creeping around all over the world and nowhere 
is it found more than in those up in the professions — 
those calling themselves men. I will dare say when Mc- 
Kinley died, some people were glad, though they never con- 
fessed it; I have no doubt when Mark Hanna died, some 
people w T ere glad; and whenever a superior man, a man 
that stands above men, passes away, there are little bits 
of men that rejoice in their hearts and in their souls. 

5. These nine men not only rejoiced to get rid of their 
superior, but also were very unthankful. " . . and they 
lifted up their voices, and said, Jesus, Master, have mercy 
on us. And when He saw them, He said unto them, Go, 
shew r yourselves unto the priests. And it came to pass, 
that, as they went, they w^ere cleansed. And one of them, 
when he saw that he was healed, turned back, and with a loud 
voice glorified God, and fell down on his face at His feet, 
giving Him thanks; and he was a Samaritan. And Jesus 
answering, said, Were there not ten cleansed? but where 
are the nine?" Were there tiot ten cleansed? Yes, but 
nine men were unthankful. Nine men were just selfish 
enough that when they got well they did not ask any ques- 
tion any more, who healed them. Have you ever noticed 
in your own association w T ith men that the very ones that 
you have accommodated the most, are the very most un- 
thankful? the very friend that you have helped in time of 
need, never recognizes the fact that you were kind to him? 
Whenever we see a man whom we have favored we always 
feel and think, Oh, I deserve thanks from him; but when- 
ever we meet the man who has served us, we never think 
of saying, I owe thanks to him. Ask ourselves the ques- 
tion as men, Are we thankful, or are we unthankful? It 
does seem to me if a man Avould stop a moment and think 
that God has made him a man, and has given him the priv- 
ilege of being a citizen of the United States, and has given 
him the privilege of being a member of the Christian 
Church, and has given him the privilege of being a power 
for good among all around him, and has given him a cer- 



662 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

tain number of years of health and strength, that man 
ought to be thankful all the rest of his days. A man that 
lives from twenty-five to thirty years in this world with 
good health and strength, has no right to complain if all 
the rest of his life is spent in sickness; but, Oh! how un- 
thankful men are; they never recognize, as a rule, the 
honor that has been bestowed upon them, and the kind- 
ness shown them. 

6. That is not the worst of it. Men, as soon as they 
get well, as a rule, start right for hell. That is a strong 
assertion, but we have the very picture in our text. Ten 
men came to the Lord Jesus as if they had a wonderful 
faith; they were sick; they wanted health, and they cried 
to Jesus for mercy, and Jesus said to them, "Go, and show 
yourselves unto the priests" — healed ! well ! — but nine of 
them never turned back; we do not even know whether 
they ever saw the priests or not ; we have no record of them 
afterwards. Tradition tells us that they were so unthank- 
ful that they got the leprosy the second time, and perished; 
but whether they did or not, one thing is certain, God Him- 
self put the question, "Where are the nine?" Here is this 
stranger, a Samaritan, come-back and gives thanks to Me, 
and I shall now save his soul as well as his body. Thy 
faith hath made thee whole; go thy way; but where are 
the nine? and we have never got the answer yet Is it 
from heaven or from hell? The very fact that Jesus said 
to one, "Thy faith hath made thee whole," leads me to 
understand that their souls went on to destruction and 
perished; they are a picture of the men I, and all faithful 
pastors, meet; when on their sick beds they want prayer — 
the service of God; they want health; they want help, and 
they make all kinds of promises how they are going to serve 
their God when they get well again; but let them be well 
three weeks, and where are they? As soon as the men get 
well the most of them start right for hell, that is where they 
go. I am not ashamed of the man, but I am ashamed of the 
conduct of men, and I would to God that I might reach the 
ears of all the men in the world this morning, to show them 
their unthankf ulness ; to show them their jealousy; to show 



FOURTEENTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. 663 

them how they are ungrateful to God for all that lie has 
done for them ! 

II. In contrast with these men, let us notice the Master. 
"And they lifted up their voices and said, Jesus, Master, 
have mercy on us. 7 ' , 

1. I called attention to the fact that Jesus Christ is 
the Master Avho loves to save men — not only women and 
children. When the Lord Jesus Christ became man, He 
did not become a woman — He became a man; and when 
He selected His apostles, He did not go around in Jerusa- 
lem and through the villages and hunt up women; He 
hunted up men as apostles; and I would love to have you 
as ladies and women remember that if God wanted women 
to preach, as they are doing in some churches to-day, con- 
trary to God's Holy Word, He would have selected a wo- 
man as an apostle. The Lord Jesus Christ not only selected 
men as apostles, but in all the three years of His ministry 
He was dealing almost exclusively with men. I say almost. 
He did save women; He did bless children, but His great 
work was among men. It was the man Mcodemus whom 
Jesus sh@wed the way to heaven, and through that way 
has shown hundreds and thousands the way ever since; 
it was on Calvary's hill that He saved a man by His side; 
and Jesus Christ, the Savior, instituted the holy ministry 
through men, to give the Gospel to the world; and has 
made woman a helpmeet in all things. 

2. Not only is it true that Jesus Christ w T ants to save 
men, but it is just as true that He will go out of His way 
to save them. It is a wonderful description we have here 
of the Lord Jesus Christ. "It came to pass as He w T ent to 
Jerusalem that He passed through the midst of Samaria 
and Galilee." That is a strange way to go to Jerusalem. 
It is about the same as if I were to say that a certain man 
of Mansfield went to Kentucky, passing through Michigan. 
If you understand the geography of the Holy Land, you 
know that Galilee lies north of Samaria, and Jerusalem 
lies south of Samaria, and yet we are told here that Jesus 
Christ went up to Jerusalem and passed through the midst 
of Samaria and Galilee, showing us the great lesson that 



604 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

I wish to impress upon men this morning, that -the Lord 
Jesus Christ not only wants every man to be saved, but will 
go out of His way to save that man, if necessary; He will 
leave Samaria and go north to go south, if necessary; He 
leaves Samaria and travels east between Samaria and Gal- 
ilee to come on around to find the ten lepers in order that 
He may save them; and Oh! how God has been after you 
men; He has been going up and down the streets of Mans- 
field, up and down your own homes; He has followed you 
with His Providential hand in order that He might find 
you and lead you to the everlasting abode above, where you 
might be well forever. O man! God wants you saved, and 
will go out of His way to save you. 

3. Not only that, He will draw very near to you, though 
you are a ieper. You know what the law was, among the 
people of Israel, and in Moses' time, that the leper would 
not dare come near any human being, but would have to 
stay away and cry out "Unclean! unclean!" In the "eighth 
chapter of Matthew we read of the Lord Jesus Christ's 
preaching that wonderful Sermon on the Mount, and when 
He came down one leper came to Him and said, "If 
Thou wilt Thou canst make me clean," He did not 
step back and say, Cry out Unclean! unclean! but stepped 
up to him, and put His hands on him, and said, Be thou 
clean, and he was clean; and in to-day's lesson, when 
going into the little village, and ten lepers are standing 
in the way, Jesus Christ does not walk around through 
some distant field, or around in some alley, but goes 
right up within hearing distance, and, as you heard 
from the description of Lew Wallace, that these ten 
lepers' voices when lifted up are not very loud. No, the 
poor lepers, when the disease takes hold of them, can 
hardly cry above a whisper. They must have been close 
to the Lord Jesus Christ when they lifted up their squeaky 
voices and said, "Jesus, Master, have mercy on us." They 
were near to One who was not afraid to draw near unto 
them — near to One who would hear their cry. 

4. Not only did He draw near unto them, but He de- 
manded as a condition of help that they should believe. 
He gave them one of the hardest tests that I think was 



FOURTEENTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. 665 

ever given to man. As I told you awhile ago, they saw 
with their own eyes they were lepers; they felt in their own 
bodies that they were lepers; every one of them knew that, 
and yet those ten men started oft' to the priests as if they 
were elean. Wonderful faith! but God demanded that. 
Whenever vou are to have vourself cured of your moral 
leprosy, you have to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. "He 
that believeth and is baptized shall be saved, and he that 
belie veth not shall be damned." All your own good works 
will never save you. Your own righteousnesses are as 
filthy rags, says God. You need something better than 
your own morality to get to heaven. You need Christ, the 
Master! "Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!" It is the only 
way to be saved. 

5. You will notice, too, that this Master has great re- 
spect for the Divine law. It was a law in the days of Moses 
that they should show themselves to the priests. The Lord 
Jesus Christ, when He was circumcized, put Himself under 
the law, and as the One who gave the people the law, He 
was obedient to the moral law; He was obedient to the 
ceremonial law; and up to the day of His crucifixion, you 
will find that every ceremonial law must be obeyed to the 
letter. "Show yourselves to the priests." What a grand 
lesson that is for you and me, as citizens of this country. 
If the Lord God, the giver of the law, was so subject to 
His* law that even the people must obey it, though He Him- 
self is the law-giver, how much more should not you and 
I be subject to all the laws, for "the government," says the 
Bible, "is of God." 

6. He not only had great respect for the Divine law, 
but this Master, you will notice, can easily cure all. When 
He healed the one leper, He touched him, and he was clean ; 
when He healed the ten lepers He does not touch them; He 
stands and cries out, "Go, show yourselves to the priests," 
as much as to say, "Your health will now lie in your obe- 
dience; if you do what I tell you to do, you are clean, and 
if you do not obey you will not be clean." Faith^ in other 
words, demanded obedience, and the moment they took 
the step to obey, their flesh became like the flesh of a child, 
their disease was all gone, and they were well. Oh, my 



666 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

dear friends, there is a great comfort in this to me, and 
that is that the Lord Jesus Christ can easily help all — 
help ten just as well as one, and He does it so easily. It 
is just as easy for the Almighty God to hold up the worlds 
on the palm of His hand, as it is to hold a grain of sand; 
it is just as easy for God to proclaim worlds into space, 
as it is to sustain the world on which we live; it is just as 
easy for the Lord God to help all men as it is to help one 
man; it is just as easy for the Lord Jesus Christ to say 
this morning to this whole congregation, "Thy sins are 
forgiven thee," as it is to say to me or to you, "Thy sins 
are forgiven thee." 

III. Having seen the Master, and the men, let us now 
turn to the man. "And one of them, when he saw that he 
was healed, turned back, and with a loud voice glorified 
God, and fell down on his face at His feet, giving Him 
thanks; and he was a Samaritan. And Jesus answering 
said, Were there not ten cleansed? but wmere are the nine? 
There are not found that returned to give glory to God, 
save this stranger. And He said unto him, Arise, go thy 
way; thy faith hath made thee whole." 

1. And there stands the man! — the man cured in 
body, and cured in soul. In some respects you cannot dis- 
tinguish the man from the men. We find that the man, 
and the men, knew that they were lepers; but do you know 
it is a mark of true manhood to know you are a leper? The 
reason some people never will be saved, is because they 
never find out they are lepers until it is too late, I always 
have more hope when I step to the sick bed of a really 
wicked man — more hope of bringing him to Christ, than 
I have of a self-righteous moralist. Some men that are going 
to be lost and damned are the good men of Mansfield, too 
good to be church members, too good to curse, too good to 
swear, too good to drink, too good to commit what the 
world calls sin, trusting in themselves instead of Christ, 
never crying for mercy for anything, believing when they 
lie down on their beds to die that God must accept them 
because they are so good, and the devil laughs, and says, 
"You are mine," and they are his. The mark of a true man 
is to know that he is a lenef 



FOURTEENTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. ()<>< • 

2. Not only did this man know that he was a leper, 
but he knew, furthermore, that as a mark of true manhood, 
he must associate with men who hear God's Word. This 
man was a Samaritan, and a Samaritan, as you know, was 
half heathen, a mixture of a heathen race and those Israel- 
ites taken captive to Babylon, and the consequence was he 
had a false religion, and if he ever wanted to find the true 
and living Savior, and get help as a poor leper, he has to 
go and associate with Jews, and the consequence was, he 
came across the border and associated with nine Jews, all 
in one company, and, being with them, he learned some- 
thing; he learned of the Jews that there is a God; he 
learned that there is a Messiah coming; he learned that 
this One who comes is Jesus, the Savior; he learned that 
there was One who a year and a half before did cure a 
leper, and if he could find the same One, he could get help; 
and so he stayed with them, and learned of this Savior, 
Jesus, and when Jesus did come that way, they all sang 
the same song, they all prayed the same prayer; they all 
joined their weak voices until it made one strong voice in 
the ear of God, "Jesus, Savior, Master, help Thy subjects; 
we do not deserve help, but herp us, out of Thy mercy; 
have mercy on us!" and there was the mark of a man, — 
a man that knew that he must hear God's Word, if he is 
ever to be brought to the right faith. 

3. And then, having that faith, which he learned by 
association with men who hear God's W T ord, he cried to 
God for mercy, and that is the mark of a man. Some peo- 
ple think it is manly never to acknowledge their sins; some 
people think it is belittling, themselves to confess that they 
are sinners. Oh, my friends, to be a real genuine man, you 
have got to go to Jesus Christ and confess your sins, and 
hold fast to Him, and acknowledge yourself as His subject, 
and call Him Master. Master includes subject; subject in- 
cludes obedience ; obedience means* to be a child of God ; 
and so this man was a man in every respect, in the fact 
that he heard of the Savior, and believed on Him, and then 
cried to Him for mercy. 

4. The man, as well as the men, were put to a severe 
test when they were told to go and show themselves to the 



-i)ti8 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

priests as clean, when they could see with their own eyes 
and feel that they were still lepers; but they believed 
Christ rather than their own senses, and obeyed the com- 
mand, and they were cleansed as they went. Here is a 
case where the man believed what he absolutely thought 
not true. When Jesus speaks, the real man will believe 
Him, for He cannot lie, and is the Truth. Is it not strange 
that to-day man}^ churches treat the doctrines of baptism 
and the Lord's Supper as if it were manly not to believe 
that Jesus meant what He said? 

5. He also showed that he was a man inasmuch as he 
further wanted to have his soul saved. Nine of those men 
seemingly were just as great men as the Samaritan, up to 
a certain point; they were all men until they were healed, 
then the nine ceased to be men, and the one showed himself 
a man. In other words, this one Samaritan said, "If He 
can cleanse my body, and give me a new body, I will be a 
child of the Master, then I want my soul also saved, and 
I want to dwell with Him forever and ever, and I am going 
back to w r here He is, and fall down before Him, and give 
Him thanks, and stay with Him until He says, 'Go thy 
way; thy faith hath made- thee whole' " — and then he was 
a man! Oh, my friends, when a man wants to be a real 
genuine man, he has got to be a saved man. A human be- 
ing, though he belong to the male sex, as long as he is 
not a child of God, is a child of the devil, and in so far is 
not manly. It is only when he comes back, and stands 
before God forgiven, as Adam stood before God in the 
Garden of Eden before he sinned, that he is an actual man, 
and may God help us all this morning to be men, and not 
only human beings. 

6. One of the beautiful marks of this man that I so 
love to dwell upon, is this, that he saw many things to do 
without being told. If there is any man that lacks the 
true manhood, it is the one that can never see anything 
to do unless he is told to do it. That is about the way 
some people are living to-day — if I am to work six hours 
a day, I will work just six hours and not a minute more; 
if I am to do a certain thing, I will do just what you put 



FOURTEENTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. 669 

down black on white, and not a thing more — a lack of 
manhood. The Lord Jesns Christ, when He started from 
Samaria to Jerusalem, did not say, "I will take the short- 
est route and miss these ten men up here." Oh, no; no 
way is too far for Him to do something He was* not told to 
do; and when these ten men were told to go and show 
themselves to the priests, Jesus did not mean that was all 
they were to do the rest of their lives. There are some 
things a man ought to see to without being told. 

This one man saw it was his duty now to walk in the 
footprints of his Master. If Jesus could go to Jerusalem 
by going north, "Why," says this Samaritan, "then I can 
go to the priests by going to Jesus, the- Great High Priest," 
and, instead of stumbling on up the hill to the city of Jeru- 
salem, before human priests, he comes back before the 
Great High Priest, and falls down, and says, "I am going 
to walk in the footprints of the Master." And whenever 
you want to see a genuine man, you will rind him walking 
in the footprints of Jesus Christ. He was not told to do 
this. Thanksgiving led him to do it. 

Then another thing he did that tie was not told to do, 
and that was to sing songs of praise to God. "And one of 
them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, and 
with a loud voice glorified God," With his leper's voice 
he cried out, "Jesus, Master, have mercy on us;" with his 
healed voice he started back and said, "Xow I am healed, 
and I cannot be satisfied until I glorify Jesus, until I praise 
His holy name." He was not told to do this, but he did 
it; he did it because he could not help it; and I say this 
morning, when a man is a true Christian he wants to praise 
God, and he cannot help it. God has not given us all equal 
voices to sing; he has not helped us all to have the equal 
gift in praising Him; but one thing every Christian on 
earth can do; if he can read, he can get a hymnbook, and 
open it up, and prayerfully follow that hymn, and if he 
is a true Christian, realizing what God has done for him, 
he cannot sit down like a stone or like a block. Beware 
my hearers, that you yourselves, do not prove in our Divine 
service, to be the nine unthankful people, stumbling on to 



670 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

Jerusalem above without a song of praise to the Master. 
Must you be told to buy a hymnbook? The fact that Jesus 
bled and died for you, and saved you, isn't that enough? 

He not only praised God, but he fell down in true humil- 
ity before Him, and gav.e the mark of a living faith. "Fell 
down on his face at His feet, giving Him thanks; and he 
was a Samaritan/ 7 and God says of this same one, "There 
are not found that returned to give glory to God, save this 
stranger." Children raised in Christian families seem to go 
to the devil sometimes, while some child, born of leprous 
parents comes to God, and God in astonishment looks down 
and says, "The stranger is here, but where are the nine?" 
The true marks of humility are great in God's eyes. Get 
down on your knees; give glory to the Master, and stay at 
His feet. That is the mark of a man. 

And he gave thanks. As I showed you a while ago, 
men as a rule are unthankful, but once in a while you find 
a stranger that is thankful, and when he is thankful, it 
stirs up the very heavens, it even surprises God. Oh ! may 
God help us men this morning to be truly thankful. A 
number of ministers of the Gospel some time ago met in 
conference; one of them came into the conference and said, 
"I never thanked God as I have to-day." "What has hap- 
pened?" "Well, I was riding across yonder dangerous 
bridge, and my horse stumbled, and I came within one of 
falling, not only off the horse, but into the deep waters 
below; and I have never been so thankful to God in all 
my life as I have to-day." Another minister rose and said, 
"I have never been more thankful in my life than I have 
to-day." "What has happened?" "I rode across that bridge, 
and my horse did not stumble at all." Didn't he have just 
as much reason to thank God as the other man did? Some 
men, if you take them right down to the gates of hell, if 
you bring them right down to the very grave, and then 
God raises them up, they have courage enough to say, "I 
thank Thee," but they could go on throughout life, well 
every day, and never think of thanking Him. Should I 
not give thanks to God for the health I have? Will we 
never learn to be thankful for the things we have got and 



FOURTEENTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. 071 

kept, instead of the things we must first lose and then get? 
Even the heathen sometimes puts the Christian to shame. 
I read in ancient history that Plato, the great philosopher, 
gave thanks to his gods every day for five things: First, 
that he was a human being and not a brute. Did you ever 
thank God that you were not born a brute? Plato did, 
every day. In the second place he thanked his gods every 
day that he was a man. Have you men ever thanked God 
that you were men? Third, he thanked his gods every day 
that he was a Greek. Have you ever thanked God that you 
were born an American? In the fourth place, he thanked his 
gods every day that he was an Athenian. Have you ever 
thanked God that you are in Ohio? Fifth, he thanked his 
gods every day that he was born in the days that he might 
have Socrates as his teacher. Have you ever thanked God 
for the teachers and instructors that you have had, who 
have made you what you are? It was in 1648, in a little 
village in Saxony, that an aged man heard the trumpets 
blow, and cried out, "Just God, are the soldiers here 
again ?" You will never understand what that meant un- 
til you realize that in the Thirty Years' War out of that 
little village nine hundred homes had been reduced to 
ashes, and only two hundred and seventy-six were stand- 
ing. "Just God, are the soldiers here again?" His wife 
came in and said to Martin Rinkart, the pastor, "I believe 
the w T ar is over; I hear them down the road shouting and 
praising God." Martin Rinkart put on his little cap and 
started down the road, and found the people embracing 
each other, some weeping, some shouting praise to heaven. 
The war is over, and peace has been declared! He went 
home and took out his pen and began to write down on 
paper 

Now thank we all our God, 

With heart, and hand, and voices, 
Who wondrous things hath done, 

In whom His world rejoices; 
Who from our mother's arms 

Hath blessed us on our way 
With countless gifts of love, 

And still is ours to-dav. 



672 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

Then he wrote the second stanza: 

O, may this bounteous God 

Through all our life be near us, 
With ever joyful hearts 

And blessed peace to cheer us ; 
And keep up in His grace, 

And guide us when perplexed,. 
And free us from all ills 

In this world and the next* 

When he wrote the third stanza, it seemed God from 
heaven gave him the music. He wrote the words first: 

All praise and thanks to God 

The Father, now be given, 
The Son, and Him who reigns 

With them in . highest heaven, 
The one eternal God, 

Whom earth and heaven adore ; 
For thus it was, is now, 

And shall be evermore. 

He took his paper and walked out into the street and be- 
gan to sing this song. I will sing the verse according to 
the melody that God gave him: (Thereupon the pastor 
sang the first stanza, as above given, according to the old 
melody), And when Martin Einkart sang the last stanza 
every citizen in that village was kneeling before his home 
in prayer, and all gave thanks tfl God; and it was the swan 
song of this man, for the next year he went home to his 
God, Amen. 

PRAYER. 

We invoke Thy divine blessing, our Heavenly Father, upon this mes- 
sage of Thine ; we thank Thee for the gift of Thy Son Jesus Christ, who has 
come into this world of leprosy, and has gone out of His way to find us, 
and has, through His Word given us a faith that has enabled us to say, 
''Jesus, Master, have mercy on us ;" and we thank Thee for Thy Holy Sacra- 
ments through which Thou hast given us the cleansing Spirit ; and we 
pray Thee, dear Lord and Master, that Thou wilt now, since we have 
been cleansed by Thy Holy Spirit, and Thy means of grace, that Thou 
wilt give us the spirit of thankfulness, that we may, as true men, come 
back to Thee, and, in true humility, fall down before Thee, and cling to 
Thee, strangerlike, yet saved body and soul. We ask it all in the name of 
Jesus, who taught us to pray: 



FOURTEENTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. G73 

Our Father, who art in heaven : Hallowed be Thy name ; Thy king- 
dom come ; Thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven. Give us, this 
day, our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those 
who trespass against us. Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from 
evil ; for Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever 
and ever. Amen. 



43 



FIFTEENTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. 



A CALL FOR CATECHUMENS. 



Matt. 6: 24-34. 



jsr 



-f^lVTO man can serve two masters : for either he will hate the one, and 
love the other ; or else he will hold to the onje and despise the 
other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon. Therefore I say unto 
you, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink ; 
nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, 
and the body than raiment? Behold the fowls of the. air: for they sow 
not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns ; yet your heavenly Father 
feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they? Which of you by taking 
thought can add one cubit unto his stature? And why take ye thought for 
raiment ? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow ; they toil not, 
neither do they spin ; and yet I say unto }^ou, That even Solomon in all 
his glory was not arrayed like one of these. Wherefore, if God so clothe 
the grass of the field, which to-day is, and to-morrow is cast into the oven, 
shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith? Therefore take no 
thought, saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Where- 
withal shall we be clothed? (For after all these things do the Gentiles 
seek:) for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these 
things. But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and His righteousness ; and 
all these things shall be added unto you. Take therefore no thought for the 
morrow ; for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Suf- 
ficient unto the day is the evil thereof." 

Sanctify us, O Lord, through Thy Truth : 
Thy Word is Truth. Amen. 



Dearly Beloved in the Lord : — 

There are few people in the world who realize that the 
great public school system is the child of Dr. Luther's cate- 
chism. The public schools of America can trace their origin 
to the Mayflower, over to England and Scotland, down to 
Wittenberg, to 1529, when Dr. Luther wrote his little cate- 
chism and established schools for the masses, that they might 

674 



FIFTEENTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. 675 

read and study it. We have no time to-day to go into detail 
as to this history, but are thinking of the thousands of chil- 
dren who are wending their way to the public schools, and of 
religious instruction which they as catechumens should now 
receive from the Christian Church. Our text is a loud call 
for people to prepare to meet their God. "Seek ye first the 
kingdom of God, and His righteousness, and all these things 
shall be added unto you." May the Holy Spirit direct us 
to-day, while we extend 

A CALL FOR CATECHUMENS. 

We will notice : 

I. What it means to catechise. 
II. What it means not to catechise. 

I. To catechise means to work as Jesus worked; to 
teach what Jesus taught; and to teach as Jesus taught. 

1. In the days of the Eeformation the Church of God 
educated her children, and no one thought of receiving mem- 
bers into church 'without thorough instruction. The time 
came when the great revival system swept over the world, 
and ministers of the Gospel discovered that they could re- 
ceive members with less work and in a shorter time. Minis- 
ters are flesh and blood, the same as other Christians, and are 
only too willing to get rid of some work. To educate the 
little children as Jesus would have them educated, means 
to work as He worked. During His ministry Jesus did 
nothing but work in that ministry. He never rested nor 
slept, except when it was absolutely necessary. You do 
not find Him riding on the boat simply for pleasure, but 
He sleeps during the storm; you do not find Him sitting 
on the well of Jacob doing nothing, but catechising the 
woman of Samaria. Wherever you find Him, He is about 
His Father's business. To educate the children of one fam- 
ily is a great task; how much more to educate the children 
of seven hundred families! It is no small task to take your 
children and instruct them during the week in the Word of 
God. To catechise means, however, to work with them as 
Jesus worked with His disciples. 



676 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

2. It also means to teach what Jesus taught. Open the 
New Testament and you will at once find that the first chap- 
ter is Bible history ; read Luke, and you will find a chain of 
truths taken from Bible history; read the seventh chapter 
of Acts, and you will find that Stephen had been well versed 
in Bible history. For three long years the Savior taught 
the Bible, referring to the Old Testament and showing plainly 
that He was the promised Messiah, the God-man. It is our 
duty in catechisation to drill the children well in Old Testa- 
ment history as well as in New Testament history. We also 
must teach them the chief parts of the Catechism as Jesus 
did. The text of the day is taken from the Sermon on the 
Mount, the first chapter of which deals largely with the 
deeper insight into the Divine law. The Ten Command- 
ments in the days of Moses were to be taught to the chil- 
dren morning, noon and evening, in the house and on the 
highway; that same law T stands yet to-day and is the foun- 
dation of all true Christianity. It becomes our duty there- 
fore to teach what Jesus taught. 

He not only taught the Divine law, but He taught the 
substance of the Apostles' Creed. He taught the world that 
God was His Father, and that only through Him could His 
Father become our Father; He taught them that He was 
conceived by the Holy Ghost and born of the virgin Mary; 
that He would suffer under Pontius Pilate; that He would 
be crucified; that He would die and that He would be 
buried; that He would rise again on the third day; that 
He would come again to judge the quick and the dead. He 
taught them of the coming of the Holy Spirit, the Comforter, 
and when He would come He would convince the world of 
sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment. He taught them 
of the Church resting upon Himself, so that the gates of 
hell should not prevail against it. He taught them the for- 
giveness of sins; He taught them the resurrection of the 
body and life everlasting. So you see that we are to teach 
our children what Jesus taught them — the Apostles' Creed. 

When His disciples came to Him asking how to pray, He 
taught them the most beautiful prayer — the Lord's Prayer. 
By His own example at the table He taught them to give 
thanks to God for what they ate and what they drank. His 



FIFTEENTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. (>7< 

life upon the mountains, while others were sleeping, was a 
life of prayer. It becomes our duty to teach our children 
from infancy to pray, to have sweet communion with their 
God. 

The Savior also taught His disciples on the great subject 
of Baptism, by being baptized Himself when He began His 
ministry. In the midst of His work He taught Nicodemus 
the necessity of being born again, and showed Him how this 
could be done, namely, by water and the Spirit. After He 
was dead and buried, and rose again, before He ascended on 
high, He called His disciples together once more and gave 
them the final command: "Go ye into all the world and 
make disciples of all nations, baptizing them into the name 
of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost." 

What Jesus taught His disciples, it becpmes our duty to 
teach our children. Why is it that so many people do not 
know whether there is any other form of baptism than im- 
mersion? Why is it that so many people do not know 
whether they should have their children baptized or not? It 
is due to the fact that they have not been properly catechised ; 
that they have not been taught what Jesus taught. 

The Lord was very careful to teach His disciples the 
Lord's Supper. It was His last will and testament. Wills 
and testaments are not written in poetry, nor with squinting 
construction, but the language must be plain — so plain that 
it cannot be misunderstood. The Lord Jesus told us plainly 
in His will that we should eat His body and drink His blood. 
Why is it that so many professed Christians do not know at 
all what Jesus did say about the Lord's Supper? Why is it 
that some people actually think that He used the word "rep- 
resent" instead of "is?" It is because they have not been 
properly catechised. They are living without the proper 
instruction. It is our duty to teach what Jesus taught. 

How many Protestant churches know anything about the 
doctrine of the Office of the Keys? Yea, how many ministers 
of the Gospel never say one word about this office? When 
Jesus spoke to Peter He said, "I will give to thee the keys 
of the kingdom of heaven, and whatsoever thou shalt bind 
on earth shall be bound in heaven; and whatsoever thou 
shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven." In order 



678 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

that Peter might not think that this was a special privilege 
given to him only, after His resurrection the Lord Jesus ap- 
peared before all the disciples and said to them, "Peace be 
unto yo. Keceive ye the Holy Ghost. Whose soever sins ye 
remit, they are remitted unto them; and whose soever sins 
ye retain they are retained." This is what Jesus taught, 
and this is what children ought to be taught in the present 
day in order that they may understand the peace which God 
wishes to proclaim to them through the Office of the Keys. 
3. To catechise means not only to work as Jesus worked, 
and to teach what Jesus taught, but to teach as Jesus taught. 
With questions and answers, by personal contact, Jesus 
spent most of His ministry. We have the record in God's 
Word of only one sermon that He preached. During most of 
the time He was questioning and answering, all about the 
Father's business". We find Him catechising Mcodemus in 
the midnight hour ; we find Him catechising the Samaritan 
woman at Jacob's well; we find Him catechising the male- 
factor on the cross, and long after He had ascended into 
heaven, He cried out from the heavens to Saul, on his way 
to Damascus, and catechised him, until he became His great- 
est apostle. How many times during the preaching of a 
sermon the hearer would like to ask this question or that, 
but the opportunity is not given. Sometimes it seems to me 
it would be well if we would catechise the whole congrega- 
tion. This personal contact between a pastor and his people 
is the same as Jesus had with His disciples. Those who have 
come into the church under a special service have a warm 
feeling for that pastor who showed them the right way ; how 
much warmer would that feeling be of the catechumens who 
for years have enjoyed the personal contact of a man of God, 
showing them the way that leads to heaven! Let us there- 
fore imitate Jesus, and teach not only what He taught, but 
teach as He taught. Let those who think that catechising 
takes too long a time remember that Jesus step by step in- 
structed His disciples for three long years. They did not go 
into the ministry directly from the plow, or from the fisher- 
man's boat ; but they took instructions, and even after listen- 
ing to the great Teacher for three years, they still were, 
very ignorant of many things that He wanted them to know, 



FIFTEENTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. 079 

and He sent the Comforter that He might bring to their re- 
membrance all tilings that lie had taught. The method there- 
fore, of (('aching should be to lead our youth, and even adults, 
step by step, to that knowledge which will make them with- 
out excuse on the great Judgment Day. We do not claim 
that all catechised people will eventually be saved. Judas 
was as well instructed as John, but John laid his head upon 
the Savior's breast and was faithful to Him until death, 
while Judas gave Him the betraying kiss and "went to his 
place." Thus members may be in the same catechetical class 
and receive the same instruction; some may be saved and 
others will not; but if we teach as Jesus taught, we shall 
make them without excuse on the great Judgment Day. 

II. Having thus shown you what it means to catechise, 
let us notice what it means not to catechise. We will enter 
more fully into our text now by noticing that not to cate- 
chise means more idolatry, more infidelity, and more insanity. 

1. "No man can serve two masters: for either he will 
hate the one, and love the other ; or else he will hold to the 
one and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mam- 
mon." From these words we notice clearly that the Lord 
Jesus observes that there is too much idolatry among the 
people. He has just told them not to lay up for themselves 
treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and 
where thieves break through and steal, but that they should 
lay up for themselves treasures in heaven, where neither 
moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break 
through nor steal. Instead of obeying this command, the 
people were trying to worship the unknown god, the god of 
mammon. When Paul stood on Mars 7 Hill he saw there an 
altar to the unknown god. Ever since sin has come into the 
world there has been an inclination on the part of sinful men 
to get a god that had no ears to hear, and no eyes to see. In 
the days of Elijah, as we have just heard in our Sunday- 
school lessons, the people worshiped Baal, and you will re- 
member that Elijah stood on Mount Carmel and addressed 
the wavering people by saying, "How long halt ye between 
two opinions? If the Lord be God, follow Him ; but if Baal, 
then follow him." It was decided on that mountain by fire 
from heaven that God the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, is the 



680 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

true and living God; but the people were again worshiping 
Baal, and they have worshiped him ever since. To-day we 
have in our own country the same unknown god. Three 
classes of men meet to form an organization; it must have 
religion or it cannot stand; consequently there must be a 
vow, or an oath, and certain prayers and forms of service to 
bury the dead; a constitution must be drawn; conditions 
must be mentioned on which people can become members. 
These three classes come together ; the one is represented by 
the minister of the Gospel, the Christian; the other is rep- 
resented by the Jew, who denies Christ; the third is repre- 
sented by the agnostic. One question all three classes can 
positively answer : Do you believe in a Supreme Being? To 
this question each of the three classes can answer, Yes. Let 
us now investigate more fully what this means. Let us ask 
the preacher: Do you believe in God the Father, Son and 
Holy Ghost? Yes, sir. Do you believe that the Bible is 
God's Word from beginning to end? Yes, sir. Then you 
believe in a Supreme Being? Yes, sir. You may be a mem- 
ber of this organization. In comes the next. To what na- 
tionality do you belong? I am a Jew. Do you believe in a 
Supreme Being? Yes, sir. Do you believe in God the 
Father? Yes. Do you believe that Jesus of Nazareth was 
the Son of God? No, sir. Do you believe that the New 
Testament is a part of the Bible? No, sir. Do you believe 
in the Holy Christian Church as represented by the. Protes- 
tants of to-day? No, sir. But you believe in a Supreme 
Being? Yes, sir. Then you can become a member. The 
atheist need not come, for he does not believe in the existence 
of a God, but such a man can not be found. In comes the 
agnostic. Do you say there is no God? No, sir. Do you 
believe that the Bible is God's Word? No, sir. Do you be- 
lieve that Jesus Christ is the Savior of the World? No, sir. 
But you do believe in a Supreme Being? Yes, sir. Then 
you can become a member of this organization. Now this 
organization must have a chaplain. Why not select the 
preacher? This organization needs prayers, for some chap- 
lains cannot pray. Now let the prayers be formulated. The 
report is now given by the committee; the prayer is com- 
pleted. Let us hear the prayer. a O God, the Father, Son 



FIFTEENTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. (581 

and Holy Ghost "Stop!" says the Jew. "Stop!" says 

the agnostic; "We do not acknowledge that we believe in 
God the Father, Son and Holy Ghost; we simply acknowl- 
edge that we believe in a Supreme Being." Well, this prayer 
can be fixed up to suit everybody; we will leave out the name 
Christ; we will simply address ourselves to the Great Archi- 
tect of the Universe — the unknown god. Baal worship to- 
day exists in America as much as it did in the gardens of 
Jezebel. The unknown god is worshiped in thousands of 
organizations where the name of Jesus Christ dare not ap- 
pear. Why is it that many even ministers of the Gospel, and 
well meaning Christians, are guilty of being members of such 
organizations? It is because they have not been properly 
catechised. They have not learned to distinguish between "a 
Supreme Being" and the true and living God. Why do we 
have such organizations? It is sometimes mentioned that 
they are here for charity's sake, but the real truth of it is that 
people join them for the purpose of making money. The ap- 
peal to them is on the ground that they need these organiza- 
tions for themselves. No man can get help unless he pays 
for it, and if he fails to pay his dues he will not get any help. 
The secret of the whole movement is the god of mammon. Is 
there any country on the face of the globe that has more mil- 
lionaires than our country has? Can a United States sen- 
ate, with millionaires as members, make just laws for the 
poor? Is it any wonder that our young people are praised 
for having their minds on wealth? Wiry are all these 
things? Besause the people have not been properly cate- 
chised, and are running after the unknown god — the god of 
mammon. How shall a child obey his parents when the 
father says Do this, and the mother says Do it not? How 
can a young man be true to his wife, and to his own mother, 
when the mother and the daughter-in-law are opposed to each 
other? How can a man be a true member of the Christian 
Church, and at the same time be a member of the worldly 
organizations worshiping the unknown god, and be true to 
both? "No man can serve two masters: for either he will 
hate the one, and love the other ; or else he will hold to the 
one and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mam- 



682 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

2. Not to catechise means not only more idolatry, but 
more infidelity. How many Church members there are in the 
present day who cannot comfort themselves with the Word 
of God if they do not have the Bible before them ; they can- 
not repeat a single beautiful hymn without the hymn-book; 
they do not know the necessary doctrines of the Word of God 
in order 153 be intelligently saved. The inexcusable ignorance 
of the present day is leading thousands of people into infidel- 
ity. Not to catechise our youth will lead them to practical 
atheism. The little bird which can neither plow, sow, nor 
reap, sings songs of praise to the Heavenly Father, and when 
night comes, flies to its little limb, puts its head under its 
wing, and sleeps, perfectly satisfied with the Father's care. 
Are not people worth more than little birds? Does not God 
say, "How much better is a man than a sheep?" Why is it 
that people are asking the questions, What shall we eat? and 
What shall w T e drink? and What shall we wear? The truth 
is that people acknowledging the existence of a god, act as 
if there were none. Theoretically, we all believe in God; 
practically we act like atheists. No wonder Jesus cried out, 
"O ye of little faith!" 

3. Not to catechise leads not only to more idolatry and 
more infidelity, but to more insanity. Isn't it insane to 
worry? Isn't it insane to neglect salvation? The Savior 
does not want us to stop thinking, but He does want us to 
stop acting as if we thought He w T ere dead, and as if we 
thought that He would not take care of us, as His dear chil- 
dren. He does want us to stop worrying. "Take therefore 
no thought for the morrow; for the morrow shall take 
thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is 
the evil thereof." Why should people worry? If anything 
has happened, and we can help it, let us go and help it, 
and stoj) worrying. If we cannot help it, isn't it insane to 
worry? We have before us in our text pictures of insanity 
given most beautifully by the Savior. When you go to an 
insane asylum you will find some patients sitting down before 
well laden tables, saying, "What shall we eat?" You will 
find some standing before good drinking water, saying, 
"What shall we drink?" You will find some well clothed, 
thinking they are not clothed. We call these people insane. 



FIFTEENTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. 683 

Now let us look at our own people. How many there are 
who are beautiful as to their physical structure; the gar- 
ments they wear cannot make them more beautiful. When 
they are properly and cleanly clothed there is nothing in all 
the world that can make them more beautiful, and yet they 
are putting the question, What shall we wear? There are 
some homely people, deformed, — all the clothing in the 
world could not make them more beautiful than they are, and 
they are still asking the question, What shall Ave wear? Isn't 
this a state of insanity? Isn't the body more than raiment? 
Is not life more than meat? When we go up street we see 
little children playing, little girls, wearing their mothers' 
skirts, in order to appear older than they are, or taller than 
they are. We call it child's play. When those little chil- 
dren take off those long skirts, they find they are neither an 
inch taller, nor a day older. How insane it would be for us 
older people, who cannot add one cubit to our stature, to try 
to take the place of God! "Which of you, by taking thought 
can add one cubit unto his stature?" It is insane for us, who 
have not the ability to make a grain of wheat, or a drop of 
water, to constantly ask the question, What shall we eat ? 
or What shall we drink? or What shall we wear? Our duty 
is to plow and sow, and reap, and pray, and save, and let God 
take care of us. Why should we ask the question, "What 
shall we eat?" when the world is groaning under the weight 
of the great harvest? Why should we ask the "question, 
"What shall we drink?" when three-fourths of the earth is 
covered with w T ater, and the springs and rivers are flowing 
down the valleys? Why should we ask the question, "What 
shall we wear?" when God is clothing the little birds with 
feathers, and is painting the most beautfiul pictures on 
the lilies? "They toil not, neither do they spin." There is 
no painting in the world as beautiful as the lilies, which are 
cut off in the morning and burned in the afternoon. "There- 
fore take no thought, saying, What shall we eat? or, What 
shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed? (For 
after all these things do the Gentiles seek) for your Heavenly 
Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things." Why 
are we asking these questions? Because we are not suffici- 
ently catechised in the Providence of God. 



G84 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

And isn't it insane, as stated before, to neglect salvation? 
The great king of the East who rode his valuable horse after 
a hare, and shot the hare, while his horse stumbled and 
killed himself, was not as insane as the man who runs after 
gold and mammon and forgets his God and his Church, and 
his soul, and plunges into eternity — lost. Isn't it a mark 
of insanity for a man in this enlightened age, in this Chris- 
tian world, to live and die a lost man, when he might have 
been saved, and should have been saved? "Seek ye first the 
kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things 
shall be added unto you." In an insane asyluni in our ow r n 
State a maiden lady sixty years of age wept, and in explain- 
ing why she wept, she said she thought that if she had a little 
child, and that child should grow up to walk, and would run 
into the fire it would burn up. She did this because she w 7 as 
insane, not thinking that it would be impossible for her to 
have that child. And yet, in our own midst we have the 
same class of people. They are borrowing troubles which 
never will come. God wants us to know how to live one day 
at a time, laboring, praying, and saving, and let the days of 
trouble in the future go, until they come. "Take, therefore, 
no thought for the morrow; for the morrow 7 shall take 
thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is 
the evil thereof" 

In conclusion, may this call for catechumens now be ex- 
tended, with power from on high, for children and adults. 
Remember that we are to seek first the kingdom of God. The 
first thing that you are to do, parents with your children, is 
to have them properly instructed in the saving knowledge of 
God's Word. If this is the first duty for children, how T much 
more must it be the first thing for adults who are yet in the 
bonds of sin. Let all old people who are not yet baptized 
and identified with the Christian Church, remember that 
they are already far too late in preparing to meet their God ; 
they have not another moment to waste ; their time is short ; 
they, too, must come and seek the kingdom of God. 

This call must be accepted, dearly beloved. I stand here 
in the name of my God. It is not my business ; it is God's 
business, that now calls upon you to become catechumens, 
and send your children for instruction. 



FIFTEENTH SU N DAY AFTER TRINITY. 685 

Not to accept a call in the name of God means certain 
destruction. Lot's family received a call from an angel on 
high to escape from the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah; some 
of them laughed at the call, but they laughed too long. The 
fires that fell and destroyed these cities also destroyed them. 
In the days of Christ, Jerusalem heard the message, but did 
not obey. In a very short time the city was destroyed. It 
is impossible to disobey a command of God without suffering 
the consequences here in time, and hereafter in eternity. 
May God, who has spared us until the present hour, lead 
us all to accept this call, and to learn more of His Word, so 
that finally when our last hour shall come, we may rejoice in 
that day when the catechumens were called, and we accepted 
the invitation. Amen. 

PRAYER. 

Heavenly Father, we ask Thy Divine blessing to rest upon this great 
Word of Thine, which comes with power to our souls in this morning hour. 
We pray Thee, O God, that Thou wilt help us to understand that nearly 
two thousand years have passed since Thou hast made these things so 
clear and plain, and yet to-day we are going on in the same path of folly ; 
we are still asking the same insane questions ; we are still lacking trust 
in the true and living God. O Heavenly Father, may the little birds preach 
to us this morning, if we will not listen to men ; may the lilies of the field, 
beautifully painted by Thine own hand, which are reaped in the morning 
and cast into the fire in the afternoon, teach us that we, who are more than 
the fowls of the air or the lilies of the field, are under Thy protecting care. 
Help us to stop worrying. If there is anything we have reason to worry 
about, and we can help it, help us to help it ; and if we cannot help it, help 
us to be satisfied. We pray for a strong faith in Thee, Father in heaven, 
help us to remember that Thou art a rich Father. Son of God, help us to 
remember that Thou art the only Heir of Heaven, and that we are by faith 
in Thee, Thy children. O Holy Spirit, Thou who didst brood upon the 
waters of creation, do Thou give us the new birth, and strengthen us for 
the battles of life, and help us to be faithful until death. O Lord God, send 
souls to be instructed in Thy Word, that they may be saved. We ask it 
all in the name of Jesus, who taught us to pray : 

Our Father, who art in heaven : Hallowed be Thy name ; Thy king- 
dom come ; Thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven. Give us, this 
day, our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those 
who trespass against us. Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from 
evil ; for Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever 
and ever. Amen. 



SIXTEENTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. 



A RUMOR OF THE REDEEMER. 



Luke 7: 11-17. 



'H 



41 \ y ND it came to pass the day after, that He went into a city called 
Nain ; and many of His disciples went with Him, and much people. 
Now, when He came nigh to the gate of the city, behold, there 
was a dead man carried out, the only son of his mother, and she was a 
widow ; and much people of the city was with her. And when the Lord 
saw her, He had compassion on her, and said unto her, Weep not. And He 
came and touched the bier: and they that bare him stood still. And He 
said, Young man, I say unto thee, Arise. And he that was dead sat up, 
and began to speak. And He delivered him to his mother. And there came 
a fear on all : and they glorified God, saying, That a great prophet is risen 
up among us; and, That God hath visited His people. And this rumor of 
Him went forth throughout all Judaea, and throughout all the region round- 
about." 

Sanctify us, O Lord, through Thy Truth: 
Thy Word is Truth. Amen. 



Beloved in Christ: — 

There are two kinds of rumors in the world. One kind 
is false and short-lived. No difference what is said about 
you, if it is a falsehood, time will show you that that false- 
hood cannot live long. On the other hand, there are rumors 
that are true, and there is one rumor that never can die, and 
it is the rumor of our text : "And this rumor of Him went 
forth throughout all Judea, and throughout all the region 
round about." May the Holy Spirit help us this morning 
to dwell prayerfully on 

A RUMOR OF THE REDEEMER. 

Notice : 
I. Hoiv it began. 
II. How it ran. q%q 



SIXTEENTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. 687 

This rumor of the Lord Jesus Christ, raising the young 
man of the city of Nain, had its origin already in an inkling 
found in the Old Testament. In the very first chapters of 
the Bible we read of a certain man who walked with God. 
Who was it, congregation? "Enoch." Enoch walked with 
God, and yet in a very short time Enoch was not. No grave 
could be found ; there was no funeral sermon ; no death bed 
scene ; Enoch went home to God ! And that going home was 
a new idea in the world, and that idea grew from day to day. 

Time passed on, and this little rumor of Enoch's leaving 
the world was found to be repeated on the eastern shore of 
the Mediterranean. Elijah had been down at the little brook 
drinking the water and eating the food provided miracu- 
lously until God sent him up to Zarephath, that he might 
there be fed by a poor widow with only one son, almost starv- 
ing, eating the last bite in the house. Time passed on, and 
that widow found it is better to have a man of God in the 
home, even though you have only one bite to eat, than to 
keep him out if you have the cellar full. 

Time passed on and her little boy died — the very one that 
was starving the day that Elijah first saw him. What did 
this man of God do? Took the boy into his room, laid him 
on his bed, prayed that God might raise him up for this 
widow, who had been so kind to him; and God raised the 
young man to life ; and the rumor of Enoch's leaving earth 
without dying was renewed. 

Time passed on, and Elijah demonstrated on Mount Car- 
mel who the true and living God was. His discouragement 
came, and his comfort also; he came back and visited the 
schools of the prophets ; he went from Gilgal to Bethel, and 
from Bethel to Jericho, and from Jericho across the Jordan ; 
Elisha went with him; the students of the school of the 
prophets watched them; and while these two men were so 
busy walking and talking with each other, they did not hear 
the tramping of the hoofs of the ethereal steeds as they came 
like fire and took this prophet of God, and galloped up to- 
ward the very heaven, until Elisha cried out: "My father, 
my father, the chariot of Israel, and the horsemen thereof!" 
And the rumor thereof started anew, that there is a home 
above for man. 



688 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

Elisha takes the mantle and starts out as a great prophet, 
and goes back to the very mountain where Elijah demon- 
strated that "The Lord He is the God;" but before he went 
he had passed by a certain home time and again, and the 
woman of that home said, "Elisha, come in, eat and drink 
with us," and she soon discovered what was discovered by 
the widow at Zarephath, that it is a blessing to have a man 
of God in the home. She said to her husband, "Let us put 
a bed on the wall for him ; let us put a table by the side of 
his bed, and a candle on his table, and invite him, every time 
he passes by, to come in." Elisha did so, and one day he 
was so pleased with this man of God and this woman of God 
that he said to them, "What would you like to have?" He 
learned that they had no children. He said to this woman 
that she should have a son at such and such a time; they 
thought it could not be, but the time came and a boy was 
born into that home. Oh ! how pleased they were with that 
son. The little boy began to walk, and they looked upon 
him as a special gift of God ; he grew strong enough one day 
to go to the fields to bring messages to the people, and he 
cried out to his father, "My head! my head!" and the father 
sent him home ; and the mother took him in her lap and held 
him there, and that great gift of God in her lap died on her 
hands. What did she do? Did she say, "God has forsaken 
me?" No.- She carried him up on the wall, took him into 
the little room, laid him on the bed of the man of God; or- 
dered the horses hitched up, sat up in the wagon herself, and 
said to the driver, "Now drive as fast as you can drive!" 
"Where?" "To that man of God on Mount Carmel !" She 
went over and saw Elisha ; brought him home ; took him up 
into the little room, and there he prayed God to bring life 
back to the son of the Shunammite ; and God raised him up, 
and he gave this boy to the mother again ; and the rumor of 
Enoch and Elijah was renewed, and there was a great ink- 
ling of this great truth. 

It is said of Abraham Holzbach's wife that, when dying, 
she cried out: "O my God, hitch up the horses now, let's 
drive home!" A strange thing for a dying woman to say, 
but the father stepped up and said, "Mother, what kind of 
horses? Where are you going," and her dying lips whis- 



SIXTEENTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. 089 

pored, "Elijah's horses — home to heaven!" These were the 
last words of the wife of Abraham Holzbach, but she had 
the inkling of a rumor that we go home when we die in 
Christ. 

2. This rumor not only began in an inkling in the Old 
Testament, but it began the day before down in Capernaum. 
In this same chapter we read of a certain nobleman down at 
Capernaum whose son was at the point of death, and he sent 
messengers to tell Christ to speak the word and his son would 
be well. Jesus Christ said, "I will come down and heal 
him." "No, no; I have an hundred soldiers under me, and 
I say to one, Go, and he goeth; and I say unto another, 
Come, and he cometh. If I can say this to my soldiers as 
a centurion, I do know that Thou, as the great Commander 
of heaven and earth, canst remain where Thou art, and say 
of my boy that he shall be well, and he shall be well." And 
no sooner was it said than the messenger came and said, 
"He is living! He is w T ell!" And the old rumor was re- 
vived, that God can raise the dead. 

3. And just then there was one of the saddest scenes in 
the little village of Nain. There was a family living there; 
the father had died before, had been carried out and laid to 
rest. It is no small matter, my friends, to carry father out 
of the home ; it means something ; and while the Lord Jesus 
Christ was down at Capernaum there was a widow up in 
Nain who had buried her husband, and if she had ever had 
any daughters their graves were beside the father's ; she had 
only one child left, and that was a son. I can see that 
widow with her only son going out of the gate of Nain, week 
after week, and planting a flower on father's grave, and, if 
there were any sisters, on the sisters' graves ; I can see them 
as they go home hand in hand, the mother with her only boy, 
she a comfort to him and he a comfort to her; I can hear 
them talking on the way home. "Oh, mother, how glad I 
am that you are living yet ;" and I can hear the mother say> 
"And what would I do without you, my boy; I am getting 
old, and when I die I want you to be a good young man and 
serve your God, that we may all meet in heaven — father, 
too, with us." And one day this boy comes into the house 
and says, "Mother, I am sick." "Lie down, my boy; take 

44 



690 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

good care of yourself; you know how I need you." And the 
boy lies down, and his head aches, and pains go through his 
body, and he cries for help, and the widow says, "It will be 
only a few days and you will be well." But the pain grows 
worse, and the sickness takes stronger hold, and the time 
comes when she really hardly knows whether he is going to 
get well or not; she cannot believe that a good and loving 
God would take her only boy away from her, and at the same 
time she can see with her own eyes he is getting weaker ; his 
heart is beating faster and his breath is growing shorter ; she 
steps out just long enough to cry, and comes back and says, 
"My boy, you will be all right ; you will get well," and in her 
own conscience she feels that maybe he will not. What 
shall she do? The breath grows shorter; the rattle is in his 
throat; his nose begins to grow cold, and the cold sweat 
stands upon his face, and his lips are blue, and his breath is 
gone, and the boy is dead! The mother goes out with a 
broken heart, and cries — the only one left in the family. 
The rumor starts out all over the village of Nain : "Did you 
hear that the boy died? Too bad! That poor widow left 
all alone!" 

4. And all this is happening while the boy down at 
Capernaum is dying, and Jesus lifts him up, and only one 
day is left and the funeral will be, and Jesus says, "It is time 
to start for Man;" and those that saw the boy at Caper- 
naum healed said, "We will go with Him, for He is Life, and 
in Him there is no death;" and they go on, and while they 
are starting for the gate of Nain the funeral is forming in 
front of the widow's house, and every home in Nain is repre- 
sented a.t that funeral ; the men are carrying the boy to his 
last resting place, and the widow, all alone, weeping behind 
the bier; and there is not a dry eye in Nain. It is a sad, 
sad funeral; but just as they walk out of the walled city, 
through the gate, lo! there comes a multitude, and at the 
head of that multitude stands Jesus Christ, who is the Way, 
the Truth and the Life ! And meeting Him under that gate 
comes another multitude following death, and death falls in- 
to the hands of Life ! And there is a voice saying to the poor 
widow in tears, "Weep not." Oh, I wish I could say, "Weep 
not," and could do what Jesus did. We say, "Weep not;" 



SIXTEENTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. 691 

but we cannot do anything. But Life gives the bier a touch, 
and His almighty touch stops the whole multitudes coming 
in both directions. He looks at the young man, and says 
unto him, "I say unto thee, Arise, 1 ' and when He says that 
He is surrounded by the two multitudes, and He stands 
there in the center — just the place for Jesus. In the cen- 
ter of all the universe, everything surrounds Christ ; in the 
center of history — on Calvary ; in the center of time, too — 
between the garden of Eden and the Eesurrection ; in the 
center of these people — mourners on the one hand and those 
that saw the young man at Capernaum raised on the other 
hand; there He stands in the center and says, "I say unto 
thee, young man, Arise," and he arose; he spoke; and Christ 
handed him back to the widow, and said, "Here he is; weep 
not." 

And how could she weep? Her boy was in her hands 
again — just in time. If the Lord Jesus Christ had come 
to her three days before, that little city of Nain would not 
have learned how God shall raise the dead ; if He had come 
two or three days sooner that widow would not have learned 
that after all we must lean, not on father, nor on my boy, 
but we must lean on God ; and that is the great lesson that 
the Lord Jesus Christ taught by His delay. He came just 
at the right time, stood just at the right place, and handed 
the boy back to his mother, and I never can think of this 
text but that my mind leaps forward to that day when the 
Lord Jesus Christ shall come to another gate and shall break 
it down, and lift my boy up and say, "Here he is." God 
hasten the day when we shall stand arm in arm and face 
to face! 

6. And when the multitude saw the dead man rise out 
of his coffin, a chill went over the people; a fear came over 
them, and, following the fear, some one began to say, "Praise 
God!" and another began to say, "Praise God!" and that is 
the way the rumor began. "And there came a fear on all : 
and they glorified God, saying, That a great prophet is risen 
up among us ; and, That God hath visited His people. And 
this rumor of Him went forth throughout all Judaea, and 
throughout all the region round about." 



692 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

II. Having noticed how the rumor began, let us notice 
how it ran. 

1. First of all, all over Nain. I can see this audience 
moving into the gate, going back into the city; I can see 
what few people may have remained at home asking, "What 
has happened? They are coming back; they have not had 
time to bury that boy!" The first they notice is the widow 
and the boy, walking hand in hand, and they hear songs, and 
the boy says "Praise God!" and the mother says "Praise 
God!" and the men that carried the bier say "Praise God!" 
and the multitude that went out weeping has wiped all 
tears away, and says "Praise God!" 

2. And those that came from Capernaum began to say, 
"This is something unusual. Yesterday down at Caper- 
naum He raised the sick boy of the centurion, and to-day 
He raises your boy, O widow! Let us all praise God!" I can 
see these people as they go home that night; they go down 
and tell the centurion. "Did you hear what happened?" 
"Why, no." "Why, we went with the Lord Jesus Christ, 
who healed your servant, to the gates of Nain; and there 
they carried a dead young man out of the gate, and the 
Savior just went up and touched the bier and stopped them 
all; in another moment He said, 'Young man, I say unto 
thee, Arise ;' the young man rose up, and He took him and 
handed him back to his mother; and they all praised God, 
and I tell you we must praise God;" and all Capernaum 
praised God ! And that is the way it ran. 

3. The rumor not only ran through Capernaum; it ran 
up to the city of Jerusalem. "And this rumor of Him went 
forth throughout all Judsea." I can see the Sanhedrin sit- 
ting at Jerusalem when the message came: "Did you hear 
what happened over at Nain?" "No, what happened?" 
"The only son of a widow — the husband had been buried 
before, and all his sisters, if he had any, are lying by his 
side — she was following that only son to his grave, and 
Jesus of Nazareth, who was up here at the temple the other 
day, walked up and touched the bier, and said, ' Arise!' and 
he arose, and all Nain is praising God!" And this rumor 
went through Jerusalem that this Jesus of Nazareth is the 
Messiah. The Sanhedrin got angry, but the people heard 



SIXTEENTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. 693 

it ; the praise went from street to street, from alley to alley, 
and from house to house. They told it at Bethlehem. Is 
this the child that was born in our city, raising the dead? 
The rumor went through all Judaea, and all around Galilee; 
it went into all the regions, and everywhere it was noticed 
that the rumor could not be stopped any more, that Jesus 
can raise the dead. Thus it ran. 

4. Following this several other resurrections took place. 
One day the Lord Jesus Christ was walking along a certain 
place and He discovered a little girl twelve years old lying 
upon a bed, dead. Oh, that day there was another sad 
home, and the people came to Him for help. He walked 
into that room of Jairus, and took his daughter, and handed 
her back, and said, "Here she is." The old rumor of Nain 
began to run again. It is the same God that raised the 
only son of the widow. 

Time passed on. This ministry of His was nearly at an 
end. He was on His way to Jerusalem, and He had been 
a special friend of two girls, Mary and Martha, and He also 
loved their brother, Lazarus ; and one day poor Lazarus got 
sick, and Mary and Martha were just wishing that Jesus 
Christ would come ; He did not come, however, and they sent 
a messenger telling Him to come on, "Our brother, whom 
Thou lovest so dearly, is sick." He did not come then; He 
did just as He did at the gate of Nain ; He wanted the peo- 
ple to learn to lean on God — the very thing He wants you 
and me to learn this morning ; He waited until Martha told 
Him he was dead, and "if Thou hadst been here my brother 
would not have died." Mary said the same thing. Then 
He said, "Where is he; come, and show me," and they went 
down to the grave, and there he had been for four long days ; 
He was told not to try to open the grave, because the odor 
would not be of the best ; he had been dead four days already. 
"No difference, roll the stone away," and there He wept! 
Oh, we have a Savior, dear friends, who can shed tears ; He 
wept there, and then He looked down into the grave, after 
He had looked up to heaven, and said, "Lazarus, come 
forth!" And Lazarus arose. He took the little child and 
brought it to life off of the bed ; He took the young man and 
brought him to life out of the coffin ; He took the grown-up 



694 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

man and brought him out of the grave. It makes no differ- 
ence whether you are up high, or whether you are on the 
level with humanity, or down in the bottom of the sea, the 
Son of God can raise you up. He can raise anybody, 
whether a child, or a young man, or the grown-up man, 
every one can be raised. And thus the rumor ran. 

In a short time a wonderful scene took place on earth — 
the most wonderful. He who walked upon the waters; He 
who did nothing but goodness and kindness ; He who healed 
the sick and raised the dead, has His hands tied, and a crown 
of thorns upon His head; they spit upon Him; they jeer 
Him; they scourge Him; they lay a cross upon His back 
and break Him down on the road to Golgotha ; they stretch 
His hands and His feet; they nail Him to the cross; they 
lift it up; there He hangs between heaven and earth, the 
Son of God and the Son of Man! Oh, how helpless He 
seems! Where is the power of Him that raised the dead? 
For three long hours they sit around Him, and stand around 
Him, and mock Him, and jeer Him, until the sun in the 
heavens can stand it no longer, and the heavens are dark, 
and for three long hours He hangs there, treading the wine 
press of the wrath of God alone, suffering the agonies of an 
eternal hell in six hours; and as He hangs there, at last 
there comes forth a cry, "My God, My God, why hast Thou 
forsaken Me?" And the answer comes back from a world 
of sin, "Where is now the power that raised the young man 
down at Nain?" At last He says, "Father, into Thy hands 
I commend My Spirit" — the work is finished ; He drops His 
head in death, and they lay Him down in a borrowed grave; 
they seal the grave; put a guard of Roman soldiers around 
it. Now the rumor is killed; the rumor is dead forever. 
Now I would like to see Him raise the dead. But above a 
command is given in heaven : "Fly to yonder rock and roll 
it away." There is a cry heard at the gates of hell : "Speak, 
hell, speak; where is thy victory? Behold, Satan, behold 
thy kingdom crushed!" It is the voice of Him who spoke 
at the gate of Nain. The stone is rolled away, and an angel 
of God sits upon that stone. All hell proclaimed it; the 
angels of God proclaimed it ; the good women proclaimed it ; 



SIXTEENTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. 695 

then Peter ran and proclaimed it; the young men from 
Emmaus go to Jerusalem that night and proclaim it. The 
windows are closed and the doors are locked. What has 
become of Jesus of Nazareth? Listen! There He stands! 
Behold Him! "Peace be unto you. lleceive ye the Holy 
Ghost. Whosesoever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto 
them ; and ^Yhosesoever sins ye retain, they are retained." It 
is the voice of Him who spoke at the gate of Nain ; it is the 
voice of Him that raised the dead; it is the voice of Him 
that hitched up the horses and the chariot and galloped to 
heaven with Elijah. It is the Son of God! And thus the 
rumor ran. 

Time passes on and the apostle Peter tells the rumor to 
the world of a risen Savior. He comes to a certain house 
and they show him the garments that were made by one of 
the best women that ever lived. Oh, but she was a good 
woman, and the worst of all is, she is dead; her name is 
Dorcas ; and Peter, in the name of Him who raised the dead 
boy at the gate of Nain, said, "Dorcas, arise, in the name of 
God!" and she lived — and thus the rumor ran. 

Nineteen years passed on. The apostle Paul, on a cer- 
tain evening, is preaching for six long hours. Eutychus is 
sitting in the window. No difference how well we preach, 
if we preach too long somebody will fall asleep. The young 
man fell asleep, and he fell out of the window ; down he goes 
for three stories, and falls on the hard pavement ; they pick 
him up, but the young man is dead. Paul steps down, picks 
him up and, in the name of God, says, "Stand forth, and 
live," and he was alive, and the rumor ran. 

5. And it kept on running, through the Dark Ages, in the 
days of the Keformation, in this enlightened age, whenever 
there is death in the home, wherever the crape is hanging on 
the door, the old story of Jesus at the gate of Nain is retold, 
and thus the rumor runs, and it will keep on running until 
Jesus Christ shall come in the clouds, with all His holy 
angels, and shall go down to the city of the dead, and shall 
meet death at the gate, and shall raise up all the dead, once 
and forever, and death shall be no more. And thus the 
rumor runs. 



696 THE GllEAT GOSPEL. 

In conclusion, dear friends, there are certain duties rest- 
ing upon us who are living this morning, and one of the very 
first duties is this, let us come to life. The man that is not 
born again; the man that does not believe in Jesus Christ as 
his only Savior ; the man that is not baptized in the name of 
the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, is a spiritually dead man. 
It is time that we come to life. It is time that every father 
should come to life ; it is time that every mother should come 
to life; it is time that every son should come to life; it is 
time that every daughter should come to life ; it is time that 
every new-born babe be brought to Jesus and have the seeds 
of regeneration planted in the little garden of its heart, that 
it may bring forth a life to come ; and so I make a plea this 
morning once again — see to it that you all come to cate- 
chetical instruction and come to life, and do not be dead 
any longer. 

And then, when you do come to life, then rise up. "And 
He came and touched the bier, and they that bare him stood 
still, and He said, Young man, I say unto thee, Arise." 
What good does it do if you are living, if you cannot rise? 
You may take three of the best men in the United States 
and put them to bed to-night and cover them over, and as 
long as they stay there under that cover you might just as 
well take three iron posts and put them in the same bed and 
cover them over, as far as their good in this world is con- 
cerned. You understand what I mean. There are men in 
this world calling themselves Christians, lying down spirit- 
ually on their backs and praying every day, "Thy kingdom 
come," who are doing absolutely nothing to make the king- 
dom of God come, and it is time, therefore, that we arise, 
and do not stay down on our bier simply because we are 
breathing. 

Another thing we should do is not only to arise, but to 
speak. "And he that was dead sat up, and began to speak." 
The first duty that this young man discovered after he arose 
from the dead was to use his tongue. We do not know what 
he said, but we might know. God did not raise him simply 
bodily; He raised him spiritually; He raised him a con- 
verted man, and, as a converted man, he used his tongue for 



SIXTEENTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. GOT 

the glory of God. It does seem to me that we have so many 
people in these days that know right from wrong and know 
they ought to speak up, but they never speak; they have a 
conviction that certain things are wrong, but you would 
never find it out; they can sit down in a company and hear 
a man blaspheme or ridicule the Church, and they smile and 
keep quiet ; they know Baal religion is all around them, but 
they haven't the courage to say a word about it. It does 
seem the time has come that we not only ought to rise up, 
but ought with a firm voice to proclaim against every wrong 
in the world, let it be whatever it pleases. 

Not only should we speak, but we should also live and 
die as children of God. I think it was Hugo of St. Victor 
Avho said these words : "I hope that my last meal on earth 
may be the Lord's Supper; I hope that my last thought on 
earth may be the awful sufferings of Jesus Christ for my 
sins ; I hope that the last word that falls from my lips may 
be Jesus." Oh, may this be our prayer this morning. May 
we all so live that when our last hour comes that we will be 
hungry for the righteousness of Christ; that our last 
thoughts may be on Calvary ; that the last word that we say 
in this life may be the sweetest of all names — Jesus. 

And, when you have fallen asleep in Jesus, then what? 
Then, my dear friends, if you have lived a Christian and died 
a Christian, O, do have a Christian burial, and nothing else. 
What would you have thought of Elijah if, instead of going 
to heaven in the chariot of fire, he had said to Elisha, 
"When I am dead, in order that I may have a goodsized 
funeral, you go up and get Jezebel and all the Baal wor- 
shipers, and after you are through with the burial you get 
them to stand around, and we will make a show?" What 
would you think of that kind of an Elijah? You know 
what I mean. No difference what your views may be on 
lodge funerals, I know that I am right and I shall stick to 
it until I die, that when a man lives a Christian and dies a 
Christian he should have a Christian burial and nothing 
else. May God help us all to make that resolution in our 
homes, that every one may understand, that our funeral 
shall be a Christian funeral, and nothing else. May God 



698 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

bJess these words, and help us to spread the rumor of the 
great Kedeemer. Amen. 

PRAYER. 

O God, our Heavenly Father, we ask Thy Divine blessing to rest 
upon the message of the hour. Little good does it do, Heavenly Father, 
what sinners think, or even what saints think, if that thinking is not in 
harmony with Thee. We pray Thee, O God, that Thou wilt help us to real- 
ize that some of. these days our time will come to be carried by other hands 
to our last resting place on earth. Heavenly Father, when that hour comes, 
may the hand of Jesus Christ touch our bier ; may His voice comfort the 
widow and comfort those that are walking after the bier; and may that 
same voice raise us up on the Judgment Day, as true children of God, hav- 
ing lived for His glory while we lived, having lived for the extension of 
His kingdom, and forever and ever to be in the place He has prepared for 
us. We pray Thee that Thou wilt go with us to-day to our respective homes ; 
help us to take this message to our family altars and there live it over by 
prayer until it becomes a part of us. We pray Thee that Thou wilt take bur 
tongues and loosen them to spread the rumor of the great Redeemer, — of that 
great Redeemer, who taught us to pray: 

Our Father, who art in heaven : Hallowed be Thy name ; Thy king- 
dom come; Thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven. Give us this 
day, our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those 
who trespass against us. Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from 
evil; for Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever 
and ever. Amen. 



SEVENTEENTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. 



IS IT RIGHT? 



H 



IvUKE 14 : 1-11. 

ii \ f ND it came to pass, as He went into the house of one of the chief 
Pharisees to eat bread on the Sabbath Day, that they watched 
Him. And, behold, there was a certain man before Him which 
had the dropsy. And Jesus answering spake unto the lawyers and Pharisees, 
saying, Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath Day? And they held their peace, 
And He took him, and healed him, and let him go; and answered them, 
saying, Which of you shall have an ass or an ox fallen into a pit, and will 
not straightway pull him out on the Sabbath Day? And they could not 
answer Him again to these things. And He put forth a parable to those 
which were bidden, when He marked how they chose out the chief rooms ; 
saying unto them, When thou art bidden of any man to a wedding, sit not 
down in the highest room ; lest a more honorable man than thou be bidden 
of him ; and he that bade thee and him come and say to thee, Give this man 
place ; and thou begin with shame to take the lowest room. But when thou 
art bidden, go and sit down in the lowest room ; that when he that bade 
thee cometh, he may say unto thee, Friend, go up higher : then shalt thou 
have worship in the presence of them that sit at meat with thee. For who- 
soever exalteth himself shall be abased ; and he that humbleth himself shall be 
exalted." 

Sanctify us, O Lord, through Thy Truth : 
Thy Word is Truth. Amen. 



Beloved in Christ : — 

The question, Is it right? is sometimes used as a catch- 
question; sometimes it is the Christ-question; it always 
should be, for the Christian, the conscience-question. 

I say sometimes that question is simply a catch-question. 
When the Pharisees tried to catch Christ they got a com- 
mittee of Herodiahs and some of their own number, and sent 
them to the great Master to ask whether it is lawful or right 
to pay tribute to Caesar. Their intention was to get Christ 
into trouble. If He should say it is not lawful to pay trib- 

699 



700 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

ute to Caesar, then the Herodians would catch Him; if He 
should say it is lawful, then the Pharisees representing Is- 
rael would catch Him. Therefore, no difference how He 
would answer, they intended to catch Him; but the Savior- 
knew what they intended to do, and simply put the question, 
What is the superscription and image on the money? They 
answered, Caesar's. Then He gave them that wise answer, 
"Bender therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's, 
and unto God the things which are God's." 

We find, however, that in our text we have a question that 
is strictly the Christ-question: Is it lawful to heal on the 
Sabbath Day? In other words, Is it right? That question 
is asked time and again by the Lord Jesus Christ of His 
disciples, Is this thing lawful, and that thing lawful? Is it 
right? In the twenty-third Psalm we find these beautiful 
words : "He restoreth my soul ; He leadeth me in the paths 
of righteousness for His name's sake." Just as soon as we 
are led in the path of Christ, we are in the path of righteous- 
ness, and when Ave have His righteousness on ourselves, 
given to us by faith in Him, the question that conscience 
must ask every day is this, Is it right? And that is the 
question that I shall put before you this morning, and may 
the Holy Spirit, in the language of our text, answer it for 
your and my eternal good. 

is IT RIGHT? 

I. To change the day of worship from Sabbath to 
Sunday? 

II. To go visiting on Sunday? 
III. To work on Sunday? 
IV. To go to church to find fault? 

V. To cultivate the spirit of pride? 

I. Is it right that ive Christians should worship the 
Lord God on Sunday instead of the old' Sabbath? "And 
it came to pass, as He Avent into the house of one of the 
chief Pharisees to eat bread on the Sabbath Day, that they 
watched Him." On which day did He go to eat bread? 
Was it Sunday? No, it was on the last day of the week; it 



SEVENTEENTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY, 701 

was on the Sabbath Day; and well might the question arise 
to-day. Is it right that the Church of God should worship 
on Sunday instead of Saturday? 

1. In answer to that question the Seventh Day Advent- 
ists tell us it is wrong. They do not hesitate a moment to tell 
us that we are the anti-Christ; that we are not the true 
Church of God, because we are worshiping on Sunday in- 
stead of on the old Sabbath Day. My dear friends, there 
again you see the necessity of more catechetical instruction. 
The great trouble is that so many people in the Church of 
God these days have never been thoroughly instructed, and 
do not know the difference between the civil, the ceremonial 
and the moral law ; nor are they able to distinguish between 
the moral and the ceremonial law in the Ten Command- 
ments. If it is a fact that a law must be obeyed forever ; if 
there is no difference between ceremonial and moral law, 
then no doubt the Seventh Day Adventists are correct, and 
we are wrong, for worshipping the first day of the week 
instead of the seventh ; for you will remember that the Lord 
God created the heavens and the earth in six days, and on 
the seventh day He rested from all His labors ; and when He 
gave that law to Moses, on Mount Sinai, He put the word 
"Remember" in only one commandment, and that was "Re- 
member the Sabbath Day to keep it holy." If the Ten 
Commandments are wholly moral, that commandment stands 
to-day, and it is wrong, I repeat it, that we should worship 
on Sunday instead of on Saturday. 

2. But, dear friends, I claim that the answer of the 
Lord of the law is just the opposite. I claim for Jesus 
Christ that the answer to-day is that the first day of the 
week is the day on which we should worship ; in other words, 
that the "seventh day" was ceremonial; and consequently 
the Lord Jesus Christ made no difference between one day 
and the other; no difference whether He healed the sick on 
the Sabbath Day or any other day; no difference whether 
He rubbed out the corn with His disciples on the Sabbath 
Day or some other day; He was dealing on all days alike, 
and made them all Sabbaths, bringing forth the reflection 
of Himself from heaven. There are some strange things 
about this Sabbath Day that ought not to. be overlooked. 



702 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

Every day in the week is accepted by some portion of the 
human race as the day of rest. Christians worship on Sun- 
day; the Greeks worship on Monday; the Persians worship 
on Tuesday; the Assyrians worship on Wednesday; the 
Egyptians worship on Thursday; the Turks on Friday and 
the Jews on Saturday. There is not a day of the week that 
some portion of the world is not setting apart as a day of 
worship. Let me quote you a few Scripture passages to 
show you that it is right to worship on the first day of the 
week : 

Matt. 12, 8: "For the Son of Man is Lord even of the 
Sabbath day." The same legislature that makes a law can 
change it; the same God that gave the third commandment 
can give its full import and meaning when on earth; and 
that same Lord gave us Col. 2, 16-17: "Let no man there- 
fore judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect of an holy 
day, or of the new moon, or of the Sabbath days : which are 
a shadow of things to come ; but the body is of Christ" — the 
difference between the ceremonial and the moral part of that 
law. In Gal. 5, 1, the apostle Paul says : "Stand fast, there- 
fore, in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and 
be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage." The real 
truth is that the Seventh Day Adventists would like to put 
us back under the yoke of bondage ; they would like to put us 
back under the old seventh day, when we find that the Lord 
Jesus Christ wanted a day of rest after Eedemption as well 
as He wanted one in the beginning after Creation. As I 
told you a moment ago, the Lord made the heavens and the 
earth in six days, and the seventh day He rested from all 
His labors. The work of Creation was not as great a work 
as the work of Eedemption. The greatest work that God 
ever did was when He redeemed the world; and while it is 
a fact that He finished Eedemption on the cross, so far as 
suffering and death is concerned, it is not true that Eedemp- 
tion was finished for the world until He had slept in the 
grave and conquered death, and came forth the glorious 
Eedeemer on Easter morning. Just as the Sabbath followed 
the great work of Creation, so there had to be a greater 
Sabbath follow the greater work of Eedemption, and that 
greater Sabbath was the day called in the Book of Eevela- 



SEVENTEENTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. 703 

tion, "the Lord's Day;" that greater Sabbath was the day 
oil which we find the apostles meeting — the first day ; that 
was the day on which the Lord Jesus Christ, the first two 
Sundays after His Insurrection, stepped into the midst of 
His people and said, "Peace be unto you," and there gave 
us the Office of the Keys. I do not say that the first day 
of the week is the only day to worship, but I do say of 
all the other six days there is no day so appropriate as that 
great memorial day of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. It 
is perfectly right that the Christian people in this day 
should worship God on the Sabbath Day that followed the 
great Redemption. 

II. I put another question : Is it right to visit on Sun- 
day* "And it came to pass, as He went into the house of 
one of the chief Pharisees to eat bread on the Sabbath Day, 
that they watched Him." In other words, the Lord Jesus 
Christ visited on the Sabbath, and surely we ought to put 
the question, Is it right that we should visit on Sunday? 

1. I answer that it is absolutely wrong to visit on Sun- 
day, if that visiting will prohibit our Divine worship. Let 
us not forget that the Lord Jesus Christ was not up there 
to spend the day visiting. If we read the chapter before 
(13, 22) we find that "He went through the cities and vil- 
lages, teaching, and journeying toward Jerusalem." It was 
while on this tour of teaching, on His way to Jerusalem, that 
He was in this place — where it was we do not know — and 
taught the people the Word of God. After the teaching was 
done He was invited by the Pharisees to come into the house 
and take dinner. He went, but, mark well, there was Divine 
service that morning, and they were all there, and when He 
made that visit He did not stop the Divine service, but kept 
on all afternoon showing those people the right way. If you 
can go visiting on Sunday, after you have done your duty in 
the Church of God; if you can go visiting and not fail to 
do your duty in all your worship, what right has any man 
to say no? Haven't you got the same right to do what the 
Master did? But notice, dear friends, there are many peo- 
ple in the present day that go visiting and do not go to the 
house of God. Notice that there are many so-called good 
Christian women who are staying at home Sunday after Sun- 



704 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

day to cook dinner for somebody, and staying out of the 
house of God. Is that right? Brethren, if that is right, it 
is right that we all stay at home on Sunday morning. If it 
is right for you to go somewhere and keep some one else out 
of the house of God, then it is right that we should all go, 
and stop the preaching of the Word, and stop Holy Baptism, 
and stop the Lord's Supper, and become heathen again. 

One time when the great Duke of Wuertemberg started 
out with a certain lady to drive past the house of God on 
Sunday to go visiting, old pastor Hedinger walked out in 
front of the team, and said to the Duke : "If you go visiting 
to-day and fail to go to the house of God, you will drive over 
my dead body!" The Duke's conscience was awakened; he 
turned back, and from that day on he never allowed himself 
to miss Divine service to go visiting. Oh ! what a blessing it 
would be if all men of God would just step out in front of 
the people going visiting on Sunday and say, "You will either 
go to the house of God or you will walk over my dead body." 
When a man commits murder we say, "Go and grasp him 
quickly," and either take him to the penitentiary or to jail, 
or, if not, go and hang him to the first post; we say it is 
absolutely wrong to break the law, "Thou shalt not kill," 
but a man can go fishing on Sunday morning, or can go away 
on an excursion, or can go and keep others away from the 
house of God, and the people say he is a good man. The 
same man that has got a right to break the third command- 
ment has a right to break the fifth. If it is right for me to 
disobey the commandment, "Remember the Sabbath-day to 
keep it holy," I have a right (pardon the expression) to cut 
my neighbor's throat. One law of God is just as powerful 
as the other, and the only reason that our community will 
call the one a sin and the other not is because conscience is 
not enlightened. 

2. Is it right to go visiting on Sunday? Yes, provided 
you go, after Divine service, to some house where you have 
an enemy, as Jesus did. Jesus did not go around and hunt 
up His friends, to go and have an excursion or a fishing 
party ; He went into a home where He had enemies, and He 
did not let those enemies keep Him from doing His work. 
He did not fail to give those enemies a very gentle rebuke. 



SEVENTEENTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. 705 

I wish I had the wisdom of my Savior in treating enemies. 
There they were going to the table — filled with pride — and 
every one wanted to sit at the head of the table. The Lord 
Jesus Christ told them a beautiful parable about a wedding 
supper, when the real truth of it is He was describing the 
ugly Pharisees' actions at the table, but He never allowed 
them for a single moment to keep Him from healing the 
poor man who had the dropsy; He allowed them to have 
their own way, but taught them and showed them that the 
best thing they can do is to be friends of their best Friend. 
If next Sunday morning you should just simply arise after 
Divine service and, after you have had your dinner, go to the 
house of one of your enemies and spend the afternoon, in- 
stead of staying with your friends and talking about that 
enemy, I believe the Lord God in heaven would sanction that 
visit. I feel that we are not doing quite enough of that kind 
of visiting. Next Sunday morning we expect to come again 
to the altar of God and receive the body and blood of the 
Lord Jesus Christ under the bread and wine, and He tells 
ns that before we come to the altar we shall go quickly and 
be reconciled with our enemies. How many of us are doing 
that? I tell you, my friends, the first thing you ought to do 
is to go, as Jesus did, on Sunday, and visit your enemies. 
And when you do go, do not let them fail to let you do your 
work. Do not fail to give them the proper rebuke, and give 
it gently as the Lord Jesus Christ did, and thus win them 
for heaven. 

III. Another question that follows very closely on the 
second is this: Is it right to work on Sunday? "And it 
came to pass, as He went into the house of one of the chief 
Pharisees to eat bread on the Sabbath Day, that they watched 
Him. And, behold, there was a certain man before Him 
which had the dropsy. And Jesus answering spake unto the 
lawyers and Pharisees, saying, Is it lawful to heal on the 
Sabbath Day? And they held their peace. And He took him, 
and healed him, and let him go/ 7 In other words, the Lord 
Jesus Christ worked on the Sabbath, and therefore I have 
a perfect right to put the question, Shall we work on 
Sunday? 

45 



706 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

1. My dear friends, if you can pull an ox out of the pit 
on Sunday, do it ; but if you go to shoving the ox into the pit 
on Sunday, stop that. Do you see the difference? Can we 
work on Sunday? Yes; there are thousands of people in 
this world that need special attention on Sunday; there are 
men working in these factories from Monday morning until 
Saturday night, and they imagine that the thing to do is to 
lounge around at home Sunday, and that that is the kind of 
rest that God wants them to have. The best thing you can 
do is to go and try to pull that ox out of the pit. Not that a 
laboring man is an ox; a laboring man is just as good as a 
preacher of the Gospel, as far as manhood is concerned, but 
the man that thinks he is keeping the Sabbath Day holy by 
sitting down doing nothing, has the mind of an ox more than 
that of a child of God. The best thing we can do is to go 
and see that man on Sunday ; go and get that man to wash 
his face, and put on his clothing, and come to church; the 
best thing we can do is to pull him out of that pit, which is 
going down to the very destruction of hell. 

2. And, on the other hand, let us beware, as I said a 
moment ago, that we do not put the ox into the pit on Sun- 
day. Sunday excursions are making men work on Sunday. 
The factory that runs on Sunday will not come out with 
greater profit at the end of the year than the one that does 
not. These things have been tried time and again. I will 
withhold the name, because some of you might know of 
w r hom I am speaking, but I will tell you of a farmer, rich, 
well recognized as a good Christian man ; usually he kept the 
Sabbath very well, but one Sunday, when his fields were 
covered with the golden grain, a storm was brewing in the 
west, and he said to his sons, "I believe we ought to haul in 
this wheat even if it is Sunday ;" it was the first time he ever 
did such a thing, but he thought he was justified; and so 
the boys brought the horses into the barn, harnessed them 
up, went out to the fields and hitched to the wagons, and 
drove out and gathered up their golden shocks, until the last 
sheaf was pitched on the wagon; they drove back to the 
barn, unhitched, put the horses down in the stable, and then 
went home, and the man congratulated himself, when the 
rain drops began to fall, that "Now my wheat is in the barn; 



SEVENTEENTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. 707 

bow I have done a good thing;" trying to quiet his con- 
science. Yes, the rain drops were falling, and the winds 
were blowing in the west, and the clouds came thicker and 
thicker, and blacker and blacker, and the lightning's flash 
was seen, and the thunder's roll was heard, and all at once 
a mighty stroke followed the flash ; the barn was struck, and 
the smoke was seen ascending, and the grain was burned, 
and the wagon and horses were burned — all gone! You 
may say it might have happened at any rate. Yes, but if the 
man had gone to the house of God, where he should have 
been, the wagon would have been in the field, his gram would 
still have been out in the fields, his horses would not have 
been burned. He lost it all ; and his conscience kept telling 
him, "Man, it is right ; it is right that you have lost all ; you 
have disobeyed God's commandment; you cannot prosper in 
anything against the Almighty God." The man that murders 
for money has lost everything ; the man that gains on a Sun- 
day deal has gotten poorer — poorer in this life ; poorer while 
lying on his bed on his dying day; poorer on the Judgment 
Day ; poorer forever. Arndt says "A house without a roof ; 
a tower without a point; a winter room without a stove; a 
land without water ; a tree without leaves ; a desert without 
an oasis; a garden without flowers; that is what the week 
would be without Sunday." Is it right to work on Sunday? 
I answer again, It is right when you help to heal the sick; 
when you do the things that must be done ; and it is all wrong 
when you do on that day the things that ought to be done 
during the week. 

IV. Another question : Is it right to go to the Church 
of God for the very purpose of finding fault? "And they 
watched Him." These Pharisees were dishonest; they were 
hypocritical. How did this poor man with the dropsy get 
into that house that day? These Pharisees made up their 
minds they were going to set a trap for the Lord Jesus 
Christ. They said, "We will invite this man with the dropsy 
to come over and take dinner with us and we will invite the 
Lord Jesus Christ to come and take dinner with us;" they 
appeared to be giving honor to Christ in order to try to ruin 
Him. They said to themselves, "If He does not help that 
poor man with the dropsy, we will proclaim to the world that 



708 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

He is a hard-hearted Savior; if He does help him we will 
proclaim Him to the world as One who broke the Sabbath 
Day; therefore, no difference what lie does, we are going to 
catch Him" — and they watched Him ; and they had that 
meeting at that special time for no other purpose than to 
find fault with Jesus Christ. 

1. Should we think it some strange thing if 'people of 
God find fault with us, if they found fault with the perfect 
Savior, when they had no reason to find fault? Is it hard 
for people to find fault with us poor imperfect mortals that 
are constantly blundering through this world? And yet I 
am here to say that if you come to the house of God with 
that purpose, "Let me watch him, and let me see if I can't 
find some fault with him," you will find plenty of fault, and 
you will make yourself believe after a while that you have a 
right to find fault, and instead of growing in grace you are 
growing in a disposition that will damn your soul ; if you do 
not stop, that is where you will land. These Pharisees kept 
on finding fault with the Lord Jesus Christ until they showed 
the greatness of their meanness. 

2. Not only that, but they also laid a trap which caught 
themselves instead of Jesus Christ. They thought, Now we 
will catch the Savior. If He heals him we will proclaim 
Him as a law-breaker; if He fails to heal him, we will pro- 
claim Him as hard-hearted. But before the Lord Jesus 
Christ did anything, He put the question to them, "Is it 
right — is it lawful — to heal on the Sabbath Day? Now 
answer." If they had said, No, it is not right, then they 
would have been looked upon as hard hearted men; if they 
had said it is right, then they would have failed to catch the 
Savior; in either case they were caught in their own trap. 
"And they held their peace; and He took him, and healed 
him, and let him go." That is the result of finding fault. 
We sometimes think by finding fault in the Church of God 
we are just going to grow ourselves, and make everybody 
think we are getting so big and others getting so little. But 
what is the result? You make yourself little, and you are 
getting smaller all the time, and catching yourself in your 
own trap; and if you do not stop finding fault in the house 



SEVENTEENTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. 709 

of God, you simply will ruin your soul. Let us beware that 
we do not get this spirit of the old Pharisee; that we do not 
get that spirit that after all would delight in the downfall 
of the Church of God; that we do not get that spirit which 
would love to see the kingdom of God narrowed instead of 
broadened. May God hasten the day when all members of 
all churches will stop the spirit of finding fault ! 

V. Another question presents itself in this text: Is it 
right to cultivate the spi?~it of pride? We are all naturally 
born proud. You can see it in the little babe ; you can see 
it in school children; you can see it everywhere. I am not 
exaggerating matters when I say that there are very few 
parents who can afford to-day to dress their children as they 
do for the public schools. I am not exaggerating matters 
when I say that there are parents who are not wearing as 
warm clothing as they should, in order to carry out the styles 
of the day. I am not exaggerating when I say that every one 
is trying to outdo the other, and the result is that we are 
cultivating the very spirit that these people had when each 
one wanted to sit at the head of the table. We do not need 
to go outside of the Christian Church to find people who will 
sit in this chair or none; who will sit in this pew or none. 
We do not need to go outside of the Church of God to find 
people who will either wear this kind of hat or stay out of 
the Church. We do not need to go outside of the Church of 
God to find parents who are teaching their children every 
day by finding fault with the walk, and the dress, of others, 
and cultivating pride; and pride is always bound to lead to 
a fall, while true humility is bound to lift up. 

"And He put forth a parable to those which were hidden 
when He marked how they chose out the chief rooms; say- 
ing unto them, When thou art bidden of any man to a wed- 
ding, sit not down in the highest room ; lest a more honorable 
man than thou be bidden of him ; and he that bade thee and 
him come and say to thee, Give this man place; and thou 
begin with shame to take the lowest room. But when thou 
art bidden, go and sit down in the lowest room; that when 
he that bade thee cometh, he may say unto thee, Friend, go 
up higher : then shalt thou have worship in the presence of 



710 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

them that sit at meat with thee. For whosoever exalteth 
himself shall be abased ; and he that humbleth himself shall 
be exalted." 

Did you ever see, in all jour life, a man that was really 
proud that did not take a fall? Did you ever see any one, 
in all your life, that was really and truly humble whom God 
did not lift up? Is it right to cultivate pride? The answer 
is, No. Let us cultivate true humility. When you find in 
your heart — and it is there — the desire to be above human- 
ity, then pray God for humility. When you find that there 
is a work that your flesh does not want to do, compel your- 
self to do it. When you find that there is a seat that others 
do not want, go and sit down there. I know a minister who 
says, whenever he writes to the pastor where a Synod is be- 
ing held, "Fin4 me the best house and the best location, you 
can;" that minister always gets the poorest place in the 
parish. I know another pastor who always writes thus : "If 
there is a home in your parish where nobody else wants to 
go, put me there." It is not going to take a very intelli- 
gent audience to know that this last man is too great a man 
to put in the low place, and they give him the best place in 
the parish. When a man wants to get up too high, God will 
bring him down ; and when a man is willing to take the low- 
est place, as Jesus did when He washed the feet of His dis- 
ciples, God will give that Christ an ascension and will give 
that man a lifting up. 

I might just as well give a parable as the great Master 
did : A farmer went out to his orchard with a sharp ax in 
one hand and a number of forked poles in the other; when 
he came to the center of the orchard there he saw tAvo trees ; 
the one was tall and slender ; its limbs stood upright by the 
side of its trunk, and it waved proudly in the air above a 
smaller tree that stood down by its side, with limbs curved 
down and filled with beautiful red apples that looked from a 
distance like roses from heaven. The farmer threw his poles 
down, took his sharp ax and walked up to the first tree and 
began to cut on one side and then on the other until it fell, 
and came down with a crash. He said, "This tree never 
would bear fruit; it raised its limbs on high and stood here, 
and gave shade to the grass that otherwise would have 



SEVENTEENTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. 711 # 

grown. I have cut it down, and will cut the limbs off and 
throw them on a pile to dry; and then will burn it to ashes. 11 
Then this fanner took one forked pole after the other and 
put them under the tree that was bending down with its red 
apples; he lifts one limb after the other and props them up 
until they are all protected ; and it stands there as a beauti- 
ful rose from heaven, with its limbs always up, lifted there 
by the owner. You know very well what is represented by 
these two trees. The one is the proud man who wants to 
lift his own self up higher than all humanity ; and God will 
bring him down to the fires of hell; while the other is the 
poor humble Christian, willing to bear fruit, and go down 
to the lowest parts of the earth for the great Master; God 
Himself will come and lift that man up, and place him higher 
and higher, until he shall be with the whole family in heaven. 
May God bless these words to our eternal good. Amen. 

PRAYERc 

O Lord, our God, we thank Thee for the blessings of the hour; we 
thank Thee for the great privilege of putting questions to conscience; and 
we pray Thee, O God, that conscience may also find the answer to these 
questions in Thy Word. We ask Thee to go with us to our respective 
homes ; help us to ponder not only over the lesson of the hour, but over 
all the lessons of all the hours of the day. We thank Thee for the heav- 
enly feast of Thy great Truth ; and we pray Thee now that Thou wilt give 
this same blessing that we ask for ourselves, to all the people in the world. 
God hasten the day when all nations shall bow before Thee, in heaven and 
on the earth. Give us the beautiful spirit of prayer that is found in Thine 
own prayer, and help us now to pray to Thee according to Thine own good 
will : 

Our Father, who art in heaven : Hallowed be Thy name ; Thy king- 
dom come ; Thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven. Give us this 
day, our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those 
who trespass against us. Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from 
evil ; for Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever 
and ever. Amen. 



EIGHTEENTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY, 



SILENCED SINNERS. 



Matt. 22: 34-46. 



B 



H^\ UT when the Pharisees had heard that He had put the Sadducees 
to silence, they were gathered together. Then one of them, which 
was a lawyer, asked Him a question, tempting Him, and saying, 
Master, which is the great commandment in the law? Jesus said unto him, 
Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy 
soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And 
the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On 
these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets. While the 
Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them, saying, What think ye 
of Christ? whose Son is He? They say unto Him, The Son of David. 
He saith unto them, How then doth David in spirit call Him Lord, saying, 
The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit Thou on My right hand, till I make 
Thine enemies Thy footstool? If David then call Him Lord, how is He 
his Son? And no man was able to answer Him a word, neither durst any 
man from that day forth ask Him any more questions. 

Sanctify us, O Lord, through Thy Truth : 
Thy Word is Truth. Amen. 



Dearly Beloved in the Lord : — 

There was a custom among the Jews, when the Passover 
was nigh at hand to find a perfect lamb and place it where 
it could be carefully examined several times a day for several 
days, if possible to discover if it might be imperfect or not. 
You know the law required a perfect lamb for the sacrifice, 
and just as this was a custom among the Jews, it appears 
that Providence intended that the great Lamb of God should 
be very carefully examined just before the Crucifixion. The 
lesson which I have just read describes the history of Christ 
after He had ridden into Jerusalem, just before the Crucifix- 
ion, and this chapter gives us one examination after the other 

712 



EIGHTEENTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. <K> 

of the Savior, but, better than the little lambs which had 
been ottered for centuries before, the Lamb of God was found 
by enemies and by friends to be without fault. When we 
notice that this examination took place immediately after 
the announcement of the parable of the marriage of the 
king's sun, we are the more surprised to find that these men 
should quibble as they did; but it is so to-day yet ; the more 
you bring the people the plain truth, as Jesus did, the more 
the people will be driven to quibble, and it is this quibbling 
that is hindering the spreading of the Gospel on earth, more 
than open infidelity. God forbid that any of us should 
quibble when we hear God's plain truth. As these men 
were silenced, so He silences every one that is not in harmony 
with Him. The Holy Spirit would therefore this morning 
direct our attention to 

. SILENCED SINNERS. 

They are silenced: 
I. By Christ's answers to their questions. 
II. By Christ's questions unanswered, 

I. "But when the Pharisees had heard that He had put 
the Sadducees to silence, they were gathered together. Then 
one of them, which was a lawyer, asked Him a question, 
tempting Him, and saying, Master, which is the great com- 
mandment in the law? Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt 
love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy 
soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great com- 
mandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love 
thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments hang 
all the law and the prophets." And the lawyer said nothing 
more ; he was silenced as all sinners are silenced, by Christ's 
answers to their questions, as well as by Christ's questions 
unanswered. There were several questions in this chapter 
to which this verse alludes : "But when the Pharisees had 
heard that He had put the Sadducees to silence, they were 
gathered together." If you read this chapter carefully you 
will find, in the first place, there was a question put by the 
Pharisees; secondly, by the Sadducees, and thirdly, by the 
Pharisees and Sadducees; and all of these were silenced. 



714 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

1. The first question came in this way: The Paschal 
Lamb had to have a severe examination just before He was to 
be offered, and these men came together with a view of en- 
tangling Him; and so they made up their minds that they 
would get a double committee, consisting partly of disciples 
of the Pharisees, and. partly of the followers of Herod — the 
Herodians; and these two classes of men, who themselves 
were opposed to each other from a governmental standpoint, 
came together to Christ with a little piece of money and 
asked Him the question, Is it right to pay tribute to Caesar? 
They thought it would be a very smart question, and that no 
difference how Jesus would answer it, He would be caught 
by one part or the other of this committee, for you will re- 
member that the Herodians were in favor of Caesar and 
against the Jews, while the disciples of the Pharisees w T ere in 
favor of the Jews and against Caesar; consequently, if Je- 
sus should say that it is right to pay tribute to Caesar, then 
the Jews would crucify Him ; if He should say it is not right, 
then the Herodians would take Him and have Him crucified, 
so that, in either case, no difference how He answered, He 
should be caught in the trap and death would be the result. 
They forget that they were talking to God, who knew their 
thoughts, and, instead of giving them a direct answer to 
their question, He said, "Show Me the tribute money," and 
they showed Him a piece of the money of the day. The Sav- 
ior said, "Whose image is that?" "Caesar's." "What is the 
writing above the image — the superscription?" "Caesar's." 
"Well," said He, "Then render to Caesar the things wiiich 
are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's." — And 
they were silenced. Instead of catching Jesus, they them- 
selves were caught. 

2. Now then the Sadducees were themselves the enemies 
of the Pharisees ; they were the agnostics of that day — the 
men who denied that there are angels; the men who denied 
that there are spirits; the men who denied that there is such' 
a thing as the resurrection of the body; they denied the 
greater part of the Old Testament, only accepting the- first 
five books, called the Pentateuch ; they were known in that 
day as the skeptics of that country; and these Sadducees 
made up their minds that now is their time to test the Paschal 



EIGHTEENTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. 715 

Lamb, to see whether He is perfect or not; and so they go to 
Him with another catch question; they tell the story about 
a certain woman that was married to a man in their neighbor- 
hood, and the man died. Moses had taught in the law that 
if a man died his widow should marry the brother, in order 
that that family, might be preserved. So they said this widow 
married the deceased one's brother; and it wasn't very long 
until the second husband died, and, carrying out Moses' 
commandment, she married the third brother; and so kept 
on, one after the other dying, until she had actually married 
the seventh brother of that same family. "Now," said they, 
"on the Resurrection morning (they did not believe in the 
Resurrection) when all these seven men come out of their 
graves, which one will be the husband of this wife?" Oh, 
they thought that was a great joke, to go to the Lord Jesus 
Christ and catch Him. The Savior did not answer their 
question directly, but He gave them an answer that shoAved 
them that He could silence them. He said, "There are two 
things you men know nothing about : one is that you are ig- 
norant of the Scriptures; and the other is that you know 
nothing about the power of God. If you knew the Scrip- 
tures at all you would know that in heaven there will be no 
marriage, and you would not come here with such a non- 
sensical question ; you simply mean to ridicule the doctrine of 
the Resurrection. Now, then, I will give you an argumentum 
ad hominem — one which you must accept. You deny the 
greater part of the Old Testament, but you acknowledge that 
Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy are 
actually the Word of God. Now, if you Sadducees were 
not ignorant of those five books, not to say anything about 
the rest, you would know T that they teach the resurrection of 
the dead; for it is in those five books which you do accept 
that God says, 'I am the God of Abraham, and the God of 
Isaac, and the God of Jacob.' If you were not a set of ig- 
noramuses you would know that God is not a God of the 
dead, but of the living, and consequently that the doctrine of 
the resurrection is taught in the first five books of the law." 
And they were silenced. 

3. And now they did just what people do in these days 
yet. The Pharisess had no love for the Sadducees, and the 



716 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

Sadducees had no love for the Pharisees. The Pharisees 
were glad that the Sadducees were whipped, and the Sad- 
ducees were glad that the Pharisees were whipped, but they 
both regretted that they should be whipped by the Lord Jesus 
Christ, and so they came together and said "Now we are going 
to become friends." — They did just like Herod, who hated 
Pontius Pilate, but he became his friend on the day he was 
to try Christ. So we have in our lesson this morning the 
coming together of these two enemies, who became friends 
to put the last test to the Lord Jesus Christ. "But when 
the Pharisees had heard that He had put the Sadducees to 
silence, they were gathered together. Then one of them, 
which was a lawyer, asked Him a question, tempting Him, 
•and saying, Master, which is the great commandment in the 
law?" When these two classes came together, they said, "We 
will catch Him this time, for we have on our statutes 248 
commandments — just as many as we have members in our 
bodies; and we have 365 prohibitions — just as many as 
there are days in the year. In other words, we have 613 
laws, and we will go to the Lord Jesus Christ with the smart- 
est rascal in our number, and we will try Him ; we will ask 
Him which one of these 613 laws is the greatest, and we will 
have 612 chances of catching Him" — but they had not. 
How did the Lord Jesus Christ silence these men? He gave 
them to understand that their 248 laws telling the people 
what to do, and their 365 laws telling the people what not to 
do — if there was any good in any of the 613, it was found in 
the Ten Commandments, and these Ten Commandments are 
all summed up in two tables, and the one table of three com- 
mandments is summed up in a few little words, also found 
in the books which the Sadducees acknowledged, "Thou shalt 
love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy 
soul, and with all thy mind ; this is the first and great com- 
mandment." And the seven other commandments on the 
second table can all be summed up in this, "Thou shalt love 
thy neighbor as thyself, and these two commandments can 
all be hung on one little golden link — God's love — and this 
love is the heart of your God, who is speaking to you. In 
other words, your 613 commandments are found summed up 



EIGHTEENTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY, 717 

in two tables of the law, in one word — Love — , and that is 
the answer. Now what have yon got to say?" 

Let ns notice a few moments this morning what this law 
said to them, and what they said to the law. This law said 
first of all to them that this is the first commandment; it is 
great for antiquity, written in the hearts of men when they 
were first created ; great because it summed up all the good 
laws of morality in the world; great because it shall stand 
forever and ever; this law requires love, and this love is a 
duty, and this love is to God Himself ; this love is to be meas- 
ured with nothing else than your whole heart, your soul, 
and your mind ; you are to love Him above all things ; you 
are to love Him with every gift of immortality that is in you ; 
you are to love Him Avith every power of your mind. What- 
ever, therefore, you can think, whatever you can accomplish 
in this w r orld, whatever you can have in your heart, must all 
be with love to God. 

This law not only says how much you shall love Him, but 
this law also tells you the reason, the claim. Love God be- 
cause He is your God, and because He is the Maker of all 
things, and the Preserver of all things. 

Another part of this law is that you are to love your neigh- 
bor as yourself; you are not simply to know him; you are 
not simply to speak to him; you are not simply to let him 
alone, but actually love him ; you are to love him, measured 
by yourself. Oh, how many of us there are who have the 
same feeling tow T ard that one who lives in the alley, in filth 
and dirt, as we have for ourselves? How many of us are as 
anxious that all people in the world shall have as good cloth- 
ing as we want? How many of us are as anxious that the 
furniture in that poor hovel shall be as good as our furniture 
is? How many of us are as anxious that the bank account 
of the poor struggling laboring man shall be just the size of 
our own? How many of us are looking for the comfort of 
our enemies as well as we are for our own? How many of us 
are obeying the great commandment of God to love Him with 
all our heart, with all our mind and with all our strength, 
and, whoever needs help, be he friend or foe, as we do our- 
selves? That is what the law says to us. What will we say 
to this law this morning? 



718 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

Those Pharisees and Sadducees said nothing. They were 
silenced. How is it about our answer? For my part, I, too, 
am silenced. How is it with you? I acknowledge before 
God that I have not kept this law. Have you? If not, then 
what are we but sinners? That man would be certainly blind 
to the meaning of God's Divine law, who could stand up and 
say, "I have kept all these things from my youth." If yoa 
read the Sermon on the Mount you will discover that the 
breaking of this law is not simply an actual deed, but a 
thought. The man who hates his brother is a murderer, 
though the law of the country does not put him in prison or 
hang him. The man who looks upon a woman to lust after 
her hath committed adultery, though the world does not look 
upon him as an adulterer. This holy law of God condemns 
you and me, and we stand before God silenced this morning.. 

II. Not only were those sinners silenced by Christ's an- 
SAvers to their questions, but they were also silenced by 
Chrlsf s questions unanswered. "While the Pharisees were 
gathered together, Jesus asked them, saying, What think ye 
of Christ? whose Son is He? They say unto Him, The Son 
of David. He saith unto them, How then doth David in 
spirit call Him Lord, saying, The Lord said unto my Lord, 
Sit Thou on my right hand, till I make Thine enemies Thy 
footstool? If David then call Him Lord, how is He his 
Son? And no man was able to answer Him a word, neither 
durst any man from that day forth ask Him any more ques- 
tions." And they were all silenced — silenced by not being 
able to answer that great question of Christ: What think 
ye of Christ? 

Notice how all at once the whole scene changes. They 
went first to the Master and catechised Him; then He si- 
lenced them and He catechised them, and His questions 
silenced them as well as His answers; and His questions 
come to us this morning, What think ye of Christ? What 
think ye of Me? What think ye of yourselves? 

1. Let us not forget that the Christ was promised in the 
garden of Eden ; let us not forget that that promise was re- 
peated time after time, and that Israel of old was looking for 
the coming of the Messiah; let us not forget that David sang 
of that Messiah and called Him his Lord, and at the same 



EIGHTEENTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. 719 

time prophesied that He should be his Son; let us not forget 
that in the last chapter of the Bible this Son is called the root 
and offspring of David. It is not hard to understand that. 
If you go into an orchard you know the difference between 
the root of a peach tree, and the peach, yet how could we say 
to-day that a certain object is both the root and the peach of 
the tree? That is what the Bible says of Christ. He is the 
root and the offspring of David — as the root He is the Son 
of God, and Lord of David from all eternity, yesterday, to- 
day, and forever; as man He is the offspring of David, so 
that Jesus could correctly speak of Himself as being the Lord 
of David, and at the same time his Son. "He saith unto 
them, How then doth David in spirit call Him Lord, saying, 
The Lord said unto my Lord, sit Thou on My right hand, till 
I make Thine enemies Thy "footstool? If David then call 
Him Lord, how is He his Son?" That would not be such a 
hard question for a child in one of our catechetical classes to 
answer ; it is not a hard question for you to answer to-day if 
you are a child of God, but just because these men had de- 
nied that Jesus was that Savior they were silenced ; and yet 
we must put that question time after time to our own people, 
What think ye of the promised Savior? What think ye of 
that One who so loved the world that when sin came, before 
the sun went down, came and announced to our first parents 
that the seed of the woman should bruise the serpent's head? 
What think ye of the love of God that made the world in order 
that the Word might become flesh and pour out its heart's 
blood and die, that we might understand that love, and come 
to Him, and be His forever? 

2. Not only was the question asked, What think ye of 
the promised Christ? but, What think ye of Him who now 
puts the question, What think ye of Me? The Paschal Lamb, 
as I said, was just ready to be offered up on Calvary's hill ; 
He had been examined by enemies on all sides and they were 
silenced at last. Now He stands forth boldly and says, "Be- 
fore they drive the nails through these hands and these feet ; 
before they pierce My breast ; before they put that crown of 
thorns on My head, look at Me once more. What think ye of 
Me? Remember that I have been here among you for three 
long years in the ministry ; from the day that I changed the 



720 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

water into wine at Cana until this day I have been busy 
day and night, working miracles, opening the eyes of the 
blind, giving hearing to the deaf, giving voice to the dumb, 
healing the sick, driving away the leprosy, raising the dead, 
as you all know; here I stand, What think ye of Me? Am 
I the promised Christ? Was there anything said about the 
coming of Christ that I have not or am not about to fulfill? 
What think ye? 

3. What do 3^011 thing of yourselves, O Pharisees, who 
a while ago thought you were so smart about the tribute 
money? What think ye of yourselves, O Sadducees, who 
deny the resurrection of the dead, when you know that that 
part of the Bible which you yourselves acknowledge teaches 
exactly that doctrine? What think ye of yourself, O lawyer, 
who came here a moment ago to tempt Me and try Me? What 
do you think of My interpretation of the law? What think 
ye of yourselves? Are you doing any thinking? The great 
trouble with you all is that you are not doing very much 
thinking except to see how mean you can be; if you would 
think what you ought to, you would know what the Word 
teaches; if you would think what you ought to, you would 
know that I am the Messiah that was promised ; if you would 
think what you ought to, you would be preparing to meet 
your God ; if you would think what you ought to, you would 
be examining your own hearts and your own sinful condition 
and the necessity of your having a Savior; if you would think 
what you ought to, you would look upon Me as the Lamb of 
God that is taking away the sins of the world instead of try- 
ing to find fault with'Me, and ruining and damning your own 
immortal souls; you would give yourselves an examination 
and answer My question right now, What think ye of Christ? 
I am not asking the question, What did you once think of the 
promised Savior; I am not asking the question, What are 
you going to think ; but right now, standing face to face be- 
fore your God, What think ye of Christ? Oh! it was a 
searching question — a question that showed them their own 
souls in their littleness; it showed them how they had abused 
the great privilege of using the great minds that God gave 
them. If they had used the same brains for the purpose of 
searching the Scriptures that they were using for the pur- 



EIGHTEENTH SUNDAY. AFTER TRINITY. 721 

pose of accomplishing the wiles of the devil, they might have 
been wise leaders of the blind instead of blind leaders of the 
blind. What think ye of yourselves? 

Again, my dear friends, the answer comes back, that our 
love to God will silence us. There was a time in the history 
of a man, in the days of Dr. Krummacher, who was very 
much perplexed about his own soul's salvation. He exam- 
ined the Divine law very carefully, and tried his best to live 
up to its requirements, and tried to comfort himself with the 
idea that he is going to be a very, very good man; but the 
more he examined this law carefully, the more he felt his own 
un worthiness and sinfulness. One day when reading over 
these very words, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all 
thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind ; and 
thy neighbor as thyself," he honestly looked up toward 
heaven and said, "O God, Thou knowest that I do not love 
Thee with all my heart, and with all my soul, and with all my 
mind ; and Thou knowest that I do not love my neighbor as 
myself," and he felt the very curse of God resting upon him, 
and he felt as though the earth were swaying under his feet ; 
he ran in to Dr. Krummacher and said, "What shall I do? 
What shall I do? I cannot love God as I ought to!" Dr. 
Krummacher saw the mental condition in which that poor 
soul was. He said, "What have -you been asking of God?" 
"Why, I have been asking of God, How do I love Thee?" 
"Oh, well," said Dr. Krummacher, "just change the question, 
and ask God how He loves thee." That gave new 7 light to 
that man, and from that day forth he stopped asking the 
question, "How do I love God?" and simply asked, "O God, 
how 7 dost Thou love me?" and the more he discovered that 
God loved him, and that love was perfect, the more he loved 
his fellow men and the more he loved his God. And then he 
understood what John meant when he said, "We love Him 
because He first loved us." 

The more you dwell on the love of God to you ; the more 
you think of His mercy in offering His life for you poor sin- 
ners, the more you will be filled with love to Him and to your 
fellow 7 men, and after a while you can come to that point in 
religion where you actually love to forgive an enemy. 

46 



722 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

While the law will silence us, God's love to us will com- 
pel us to speak, and the first thing that we should say is to 
ask His forgiveness. May God then help us all this morn- 
ing to give ourselves a careful examination, and trust alone 
in the mercy of Christ. 

It is said of Emperor Julian, that he was so great that 
he could listen to the speaker, and dictate, and write, all at 
the same time. While you and I may not be able to do what 
Emperor Julian did, still there is one thing we can do; we 
can put Christ in the center of our minds and think of Him 
in all things that we do in this world. May God then bring 
forth of us this plain duty of having Christ first in our 
minds, and then, whatever we do, do it all to His glory. 
Amen. 



NINETEENTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY, 



SICK SINNERS. 



Matt. 9 : 1-8. 



: H 



41 | ^ ND He entered into a ship, and passed over, and came into His 
own city. And, behold, they brought to Him a man sick of the 
palsy, lying on a bed : and Jesus seeing their faith said unto the 
sick of the palsy : Son, be of good cheer ; thy sins be forgiven thee. And, 
behold, certain of the scribes said within themselves, This man blasphemeth. 
And Jesus, knowing their thoughts said, Wherefore think ye evil in your 
hearts ? For whether is easier, to say, Thy sins be forgiven thee ; or to 
say, Arise, and walk? But that ye may know that the Son of man hath 
power on earth to forgive sins, (then saith He to the sick of the palsy) 
Arise, take up thy bed, and go unto thine house. And he arose, and departed 
to his house. But when the multiude saw it, they marvelled, and glorified 
God, which had given such power unto men. 

Sanctify us, O Lord, through Thy Truth : 
Thy Word is Truth. Amen. 



"And He entered into a ship, and passed over, and came 
into His own city." What city was this? Was it Jerusa- 
lem, the city of peace — the city of God? No! Jerusalem 
was His own city, but it was not to that city that He came 
this time. How about Bethlehem, where the Savior was 
born, is not that pre-eminently the city of Jesus? Yes, and 
yet it was not to Bethlehem that He came. Was it Naza- 
reth? Was not Nazareth* His own city? Did not His 
father and mother take Him there and raise Him? Yes, 
Nazareth was His own city, but it is not the city to which 
He came on this ship. Right close to the mouth of the 
Jordan, as it empties into the Sea of Galilee, a little west, 
lay that beautiful city of Capernaum, the city into which 
He went to dwell at the time He heard that John the Bap- 

723 



724 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

tist had been cast into prison. It was into this city that 
He came and called it His own ; it was to this city that they 
carried a man sick of the palsy, and Jesus said to him, 
"Thy sins be forgiven thee." So we find that this one was 
not only sick but he was a sick sinner, and you and I, more 
or less, are sick sinners. May the Holy Spirit help us this 
morning to find some practical application of this theme. 

SICK SINNERS. 

I. Sin came into the world before sickness did. You 
will realize at once that if sin had not come into the world 
there would have been no condemnation of death, and if 
there had been no death, there would have been no sickness. 

1. When our first parents sinned they had in them a 
something that began death. Spiritually they were dead 
the moment they sinned, bodily death began to work on 
them; so we are perfectly right when we say that sin is 
the beginning of death. 

2. Not only is this true, but sickness is death work- 
ing on us. Sometimes people get sick and well, sick and well, 
and they imagine that when they have gotten over a certain 
disease that death has never been near. Every pain in your 
body, every sickness that comes over you, is a rap of death at 
your door, saying, The time is coming when this temple 
must go down. The fact that the Japanese may run back 
from Port Arthur now and then and let the Eussians have 
a day's peace, is no evidence that Port Arthur will not fall; 
the enemy will be back, and some day you will hear that 
Port Arthur has fallen. Just so sickness comes and takes 
hold of your body. It may be that medical science, together 
with God's will, means that you shall recover, but your 
recovery is no evidence that death was not there. What 
is sickness? Sickness is death rapping at the body of a 
man announcing to him that after a while the victory must 
come, and death is the wages of sin. Had it not been for 
sin this poor man would not have had the palsy, and would 
not have been carried to the Lord Jesus on that bed. 

II. Another thought which I wish to leave with you to- 
day is this, That sin and sickness may dwell together. When 



NINETEENTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. 725 

1 

this young man was carried into the presence of the Lord 
Jesus Christ, Jesus said to him, "Thy sins be forgiven thee," 
and later on He said, "Take up thy bed and walk." From 
these two answers w r e learn distinctly that the man was 
carried there not only sick, but a sinner, and that sin and 
sickness dwelt together in the same body. And we learn 
from this two other practical facts: That bodily sickness 
is bad, but that sin is w T orse than sickness. 

1. Sickness itself is bad. Oh, my friends, if we could 
see that young man this morning lying on that bed help- 
less, strong feet upon which he used to w r alk, lying there 
unable to move; hands with which he formerly labored, 
lying there wracked in pain; not able to raise his head; 
his body lying there helpless, suffering intensely. I believe 
that when they let this man down through the roof, as 
Luke tells us, into the presence of the Savior, that he was 
crying, for the first thing that Jesus said to him was, "Be 
of good cheer." No wonder he cried. When the young 
man feels that he is the support of his family, and when 
he feels that at one time he could run and work, and en- 
joy himself, and had no sickness nor pain, and now lies 
here so helpless, it makes the tears come. I tell you, my 
friends, sickness is a bad thing — a thoroughly bad thing. 
You can see that in this young man; you can see it in poor 
Lazarus. See him lying there at the door of the rich man, 
begging for crumbs, so helpless that he could neither go 
away nor go up to the table — so forsaken that only dogs 
came and licked his sores. After his death not one word 
is said of his burial; it may be the very dogs carried him 
away and tore him to pieces. 

2. It is a terrible thing to be sick, and yet I want to 
tell you that sin-sickness is far worse than bodily sick- 
ness. Soul sickness is the worst disease in the world. 
When this poor, crying, physically wrecked man, was let 
down through the roof into the presence of Jesus, the Great 
Physician did not step up and say, "Now pain, get out of 
this arm; now stop wracking this body;" no, He looked at 
him and said, "Be of good cheer; thy sins be forgiven thee." 
Why did He say that first? Because that man needed for- 
giveness of sin more than he needed a healthy body, teach- 



720 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

ing us the great truth that we had better be sick on our 
beds and be soul well, than to have a healthy body and be 
soul sick. I spoke a moment ago of poor Lazarus, lying 
at the gate of the rich man. Compare Lazarus with that 
man sitting up there, wearing the purple, surrounded with 
all the enjoyment this world could give ; no aches; no pains; 
no sympathy; he would let the poor tramp down at the 
gate die and be devoured by the dogs, rather than help 
him. The w T orld looking at these two men would say, "Oh, 
that I could be the king in purple !" and "Oh, how I would 
hate to be in poor Lazarus' place, " but I want to tell you 
that Lazarus was a thousand times better off, even licked 
and afterwards devoured by dogs, than that king upon the 
throne. Look at these men a little later and you will find 
Lazarus in the bosom of Abraham, in perfect bliss and hap- 
piness; but look at the rich man down in hell, crying out 
that Abraham might send Lazarus to tell his brethren that 
they might not come into this place of torment; he is cry- 
ing now for help, for one drop of water to cool his burning 
tongue. The one was soul sick, and the other was bodily 
sick. No wonder that Jesus said to the man, "Thy sins 
be forgiven thee," before He said, "Take up thy bed and 
walk." The first thing every man on earth ought to do 
is to know that he has a saved soul in him, to have his sins 
forgiven, and then to have this body cured, and .for this 
reason it is all wrong for any physician to tell the family 
that a minister of the Gospel dare not come to the sick 
bed. It is wrong to send for the physician first and not 
let the man of God know until weeks afterward that he has 
been sick. The thing to do is to send for the man of God, 
and for the physician, and we should work and pray for 
the salvation and restoration of the sick body and soul. 

III. We notice, furthermore, that sin and sickness need 
our attention. 

1. We ought to help the sick and do all we can to 
bring them to the Lord Jesus. "And, behold, they brought 
to Him a man sick of the palsy, lying on a bed; and Jesus 
seeing their faith said unto the sick of the palsy: Son, be 
of good cheer; thy sins be forgiven thee." This poor man 
never could have come to Christ had it not been for his 



NINETEENTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. 727 

neighbors, but there were some neighbors there that said, 
"Look here, Christ has come home; He is over here in Ca- 
pernaum, and 1 tell you what we will do; to-morrow we 
will come over here, four of us, and we will put you on a 
bed, and we will one of us get at each corner, and carry 
you over there into His presence, if we have got to tear the 
roof oft' the house. 7 ' The result was that this man got well, 
just because his neighbors took an interest in him and 
helped him. I say it is our duty as people in this world 
to take care of the sick. It is the duty of the Church. The 
Lord God has not only given you the strength to carry 
your own body, but He has given you the strength to carry 
your body and to carry another man. I never felt in all 
my life how much I owed to my God, as I did one day when 
another man and myself in our turn stood upon the scale 
to see how much we could lift. I never knew that a man of 
my size could lift a small horse, and yet I could do it. My 
friends, if a man can lift nearly a thousand pounds, what 
right has he to go through this world carrying nothing but 
his lazy body around? We have in our own family to-day one 
man who has worked hard for the last twenty-five years; I 
knew him when I was a boy working on the shoe bench; I 
knew him with his fingers rough and calloused by hard 
work; I have followed him these twenty-five years; he has 
raised a Christian family; he has paid his debts; he is to- 
day just as poor as he was when born, except the suit of 
clothing he has on his back; he is sick and on his back, 
My friends, it does not take very much intelligence to know 
where duty lies. If I get on my back and cannot lift my 
hands and feet, I want men who can carry more than their 
own bodies to come and hold my hands up, to come and 
help me in time of sickness; and I want to say that the 
Church of God has lost her power just because she has 
turned over her sick to worldly lodges instead of doing 
her duty as children of God ought to do, not helping their 
fellow men because they are paid for it; not because there 
has been an arrangement made by which they have got 
to do it, but because they love their fellow men. When 
once we get the Samaritan spirit in our hearts, and when 
we see a man suffering say, "God give me enough strength 



728 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

to carry my body and his," and lift him up; then we shall 
be walking in God's path; then we shall have a power in 
the Church of God. What the First Lutheran Church 
wants to do is to take care of her own sick, and when any 
man is sick, and lying on his back for weeks, is to come 
and buy his bread and take care of him as long as he proves 
himself to be worthy. And what we owe to this man we 
owe to every one, not only to ourselves — that is selfish- 
ness; we owe it to a man whether he is in the Church or 
out of the Church; we owe it to the poorest drunkard in 
this city; we owe it to the man going down to perdition, 
to lift him up. I tell you one word of kindness in time of 
trouble goes further than thousands of sermnns, and the 
reason that the Church of God is looked upon by the poor 
man as a place not to go, is because he feels that he has 
got to spend more money than he has got to be at home 
in that church, and because, if a man is in trouble, he can- 
not get help. I love the spirit of these four men that picked 
up this man sick of the palsy and carried him to Christ. 

2. And this is not only true with regard to our phys- 
ical ailments; it is just as true with regard to our souls. I 
have heard people say, What good does it do to bring this 
little child to the altar and have it baptized? That poor- 
little child does not understand things. You might just as 
w^ell say, What is the use to go home to-day and feed that 
little child; that little child does not understand things. 
Just because the little child does not understand things, 
parents ought to have sense enough to understand things. 
I would have 3^ou to understand that the Lord God not only 
watches the faith of the one that is brought, but watches 
the faith of those that bring the one. "And Jesus seeing 
their faith said unto the sick of the palsy : Son, be of good 
cheer; thy sins be forgiven thee." I can just as well say 
this morning of the little child that was just baptized, 
"God seeing their faith, said to the little babe, I cleanse 
thee of thy sins," for while it is a fact that every man must 
have his own faith, that every man must give an account 
before God of his own sins, it is also true that the Lord 
God looks upon the faith of those that bring others, and 
we have here a testimonv from God's own mouth that He 



NINETEENTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. 729 

looks upon the faith of those that carry the sick; He looks 
upon the faith of the parents and sponsers who bring their 
children to the altar, and consequently we must not only 
be satisfied with our own salvation, but not rest until 
every one in our families and all around us are brought to 
the Lord Jesus Christ, if we have to tear the roof off of the 
house to bring them. That was no small effort upon the 
part of these men to come to Christ that day. Luke tells 
us when they came near the house it was surrounded by 
the multitude, the doorway closed up, Jesus was speaking- 
inside the house. How shall they bring this sick man in? 
Did they go back and say, "No use trying to-day?" Did 
they go back and say, "We have got to come some other 
time?" No. The man was suffering intense pain. The 
cry of his soul was, "I must have help to-day!" Four men 
said, "We will bring you to Christ to-day, no difference how 
it goes," and they carry him away out in the distance, and 
in that country the roofs of the houses are level instead 
of shaped as they are in this country, and so they started 
in the distance ; they took him up on the top of a house and 
carried him from one roof to another; now and then you 
could hear one of the four say, "Let me listen;" he would 
put his ear down to listen for the voice of Christ; not there; 
th£y go on, and finally they say, "He is under here; I hear 
His Toice," and just in front of Him they begin to tear up 
the roof of the house, one tile after another comes up; then 
they take a rope and let the bed down, and the man goes 
down, and Jesus stops His discourse. My dear friends, 
this man that was let down that day did not say one word; 
he did not say, "Lord, help me;" he did not say, "Lord, 
forgive my sins;" it was not necessary for him to say any- 
thing. When Peter wept bitterly the Lord forgave him. 
It was not necessary for Peter to say anything. Whenever 
you get so interested in your soul's salvation that you tear 
the roof off of the house to get into the presence of Christ, 
you do not need to talk; the shingles talked; the four men 
talked; the letting down of the man into the presence of 
God talked louder than words; — and Christ saved the 
man's body and soul. 



730 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

IV. This leads me to another idea of the text, and that is 
that sin must not be measured by sickness. The greatest 
claim of our present century among the faith healers, and 
among the Dowieites, and a great many other "ites" is sim- 
ply this, that if a man is sick he must be guilty of some 
great sin, or he would not be sick. 

1. I call your attention to the fact that the Lord Jesus 
Christ healed this man's soul and forgave him his sins, and 
the man still had the palsj^. It does not make a bit of dif- 
ference how long a time elapsed between the first saying 
and the second, whether live minutes or five days, if this 
man could have his sins forgiven and lie there on his bed 
still sick, it goes to prove that you cannot measure sin by 
sickness; and it goes to prove, furthermore, that some of 
the people who are sick in this world have their sins 
forgiven, while others, who are not sick, have not their sins 
forgiven. Two classes of people were there before the Sa- 
vior; the one was a poor sick man, with his sins forgiven, 
a child of God, and if he had died in that moment he would 
have gone to heaven, whether his body was well or not. 
Oh, my dear friends, if you have sickness, and pains, and 
many trials and troubles at home, do not draw the conclu- 
sion that you have sinned more than others have. 

2. Eight in the presence of the same Savior there were 
Pharisees and scribes, and Jesus, looking at them, said, 
"Wherefore think ye evil in your hearts?" When a man 
thinks evil in his heart he is a bad man, but those bad men 
were not lying on sick beds, they were well. If the idea 
of all these different "ites" that I have mentioned is cor- 
rect, then every well man in the city of Mansfield is a Chris- 
tian, and every sick man is a sinner. I tell you it is a mis- 
take to try to measure sin by sickness. Some of the best 
souls that ever lived are suffering every day, and some of 
the meanest, ungodly wretches on earth do not know what 
sickness is. 

V. And this leads me to another thought, and that is 
that sin and sickness must yield when Christ speaks. Jesus 
said to this young man, "Thy sins be forgiven thee, and he 
was forgiven. The scribes thought this was blasphemy. 



NINETEENTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. 731 

It would have been if Christ had been an ordinary man. 
They failed to recognize, however, that this One who spoke 
was the Son of God, and consequently it was not blas- 
phemy, but when he said those words the man was forgiven. 

And when Ave come to the Holy Supper to-day, and'the 
words of Christ are repeated, "Take, drink, this is my blood, 
which was shed for you and for many for the remission of 
sins/' just as surely as you come to this table in repent- 
ance, just so surely your sins are forgiven. Sin must yield 
when God speaks. 

2. This is not only true of sin; it is also true of sick- 
ness. I said in the beginning that sickness is death rap- 
ping at the temple notifying you that destruction is com- 
ing; but let us not forget that sickness itself has not the 
control of man in such a way that God has nothing to say 
about it. All the powers of hell are still in God's hands, 
and when God comes to the sick man and says, "I want 
you to get well," he recovers. Remember, my friends, God 
makes use of medicine; God makes use of physicians; God 
makes use of nurses, just as He made use of these four men 
to carry this man into the presence of Jesus Christ; but 
when God wants a man to get well, he will get well. I 
tell you sickness must yield when God speaks. 

I have heard a great many people say lately, "Did this 
doctor help your wife? Did that one help your wife?" 
Well, they may have all done some good, but God did it all. 
I want to say this morning that I would feel ungrateful 
to God in heaven if I did not do as this man did, and give 
God all the glory. Luke tells us when this man arose, he 
took up his bed and glorified God. How could he help it? 
How could he help giving glory to the voice of Him who 
just raised him from that sickness? 

Not only did he glorify God, but they all found the 
contagion and began to glorify Him. "But when the mul- 
titude saw it, they marvelled, and glorified God, which had 
given such power unto men." This is a wonderful lesson. 
What a comfort it is in our homes to know that sin came 
into the world before sickness did; to know that sin and 
sickness may dwell in the same person; to know that sin 



732 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

and sickness must have the attention of the world; to 
know that the one was healed before the other; to know 
that all must yield when God speaks. Yes, let us give 
glory to the Father who hath created us; let us give glory 
this morning to Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who hath 
laid down His life that we might eat and drink His body 
and blood; let us give glory to Jesus, the Lamb of God, 
that taketh away the sins of the world, and who now in- 
vites us to come to His supper; let us give glory to the 
Holy Spirit, who has preserved the Word for us, and who 
still calls, and still gathers, and still enlightens and still 
sanctifies and keeps us. Amen. 

PRAYER. 

O Heavenly Father, we thank Thee in this morning hour that though 
sin has come into the world and is bound by Thine own law to bring the 
body down to death, that Thou art the Word of Life, and that through 
Thy Son, Jesus Christ, the sick can again rise, and that through Him, those 
that have sinned may have forgiveness. We thank Thee that the time will 
come when in body and soul we shall all rise before Thee at Thy Word; 
and as we are still in this world of sin and sickness, we pray Thee that 
Thou wilt make our hearts large by the largeness of the heart of Jesus 
Christ; that Thou wilt enlarge our love by the love that poured its life 
out that we might have life ; that Thou wilt enlarge our benevolence because 
we have been brought to Him who can make those to walk home with 
their beds on their backs who were carried into Thy presence. Give Thy 
special blessing to all our sick and afflicted to-day. We ask it all in the name 
of Him who taught us to pray : 

Our Father, who art in heaven : Hallowed be Thy name ; Thy king- 
dom come ; Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven ; give us, this day, 
our daily bread ; and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who 
trespass against us. Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil, 
for Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever and ever. 
Amen. 



TWENTIETH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. 



SPEECHLESS SINNERS. 



Matt. 22 : 1-14. 



HND Jesus answered and spake unto them again by parables, and said, 
The Kingdom of heaven is like unto a certain king, which made a 
marriage for his son, and sent forth his servants to call them that 
were bidden to the wedding ; and they would not come. Again, he sent forth 
other servants, saying, Tell tliem which are bidden, Behold, I have prepared 
my dinner ; my oxen and my fatlings are killed, and all things are ready : 
come unto the ma'rriage. But they made light of it, and went their ways, one 
to his farm ; another to his merchandise ; and the remnant took his servants, 
and entreated them spitefully, and slew them. But when the king heard 
thereof, he was wroth ; and he sent forth his armies, and destroyed those 
murderers, and burned up their city. Then saith he to his servants, The wed- 
ding is ready, but they which were bidden were not worthy. Go ye therefore 
into the highways, and as many as ye shall find, bid to the marriage. So those 
servants went out into the highways, and gathered together all as many as 
they found, both bad and good ; and the wedding was furnished with guests. 
And when the king came in to see the guests, he saw there a man which had 
not on a wedding garment ; and he saith unto him, Friend, how earnest thou in 
hither not having a wedding garment? And he was speechless. Then said 
the king to his servants, Bind him hand and foot, and take him away, and 
cast him into outer darkness; there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth. 
For many are called, but few are chosen. 

Sanctify us, O Lord, through Thy Truth : 
Thy Word is Truth. Amen. 



Beloved in Christ: — 

"For many are called, but few are chosen." Do you 
realize how many people there are in the world? Think of 
the multitudes that are walking up and down on the earth 
this very morning ! Think of the multitudes that have lived 
in the centuries past, and then remember that all who are 
on earth this morning, before another hundred years, shall 
be sleeping the sleep of death, and other great multitudes 

733. 



734 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

not yet born shall be walking up and down on this earth; 
and thus the human race shall multiply until the consumma- 
tion of all things. Oh! the great number of people in the 
world? God only knows how many there have been; how 
many there are, and how many there shall be; but not one 
of all this number shall fail to be called to the Great Mas- 
ter's feast. Many are called; few are chosen. 

And there comes the solemn thought, that of all the mul- 
titudes of people in this world, there are so many who never 
want to be saved. And here comes another solemn thought 
that most of the people who are saved have been saved be- 
fore their fifteenth year. It is an exception if one should 
be saved between the years of fifteen and twenty ; it is still 
a rarer exception if any one shall be saved after the twen- 
tieth year. The great majority of Christians on earth to- 
day have been brought to their Savior in infancy. There 
is a great deal said these days in Sunday-school conventions 
about the Cradle Eoll; about going into the home and get- 
ting the names of the little children as soon as they are 
born, and putting them on the cradle roll. I am glad to 
see that the Church of God is waking up to the necessity of 
getting the child as soon as it is born, for the Church of 
God; but the cradle roll is nothing new, nor is it anything 
very complete yet. If you will go over to Europe you will 
find from the days of Luther until to-day, they, can tell you 
when our great-great-great-grandfather was born, not only 
to the day, but to the hour; they have the record there; 
and you will find furthermore, in those records, that they 
were baptized in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy 
Ghost from two to eight days after their birth. And the 
cradle roll, while it is a showing that the Church of God 
is waking up to the necessity of going after the little in- 
fants, is still a very lame thing ; for what difference is there, 
after all, between a little babe in the cradle that has its 
name on the cradle roll of the Sunday-school, and another 
little infant that has not got its name on the cradle roll, 
if those two children die before they are old enough to go to 
Sunday-school? The fact that the one babe has died with its 
name on the cradle roll, and the other not, has not brought 
any means of grace to the one more than to the other. What 



TWENTIETH SUNDAY AJFTER TRINITY. 735 

the Sunday-schools in this country must learn is to go back 
to the principles of the old Lutheran Church, and that is to 
have the cradle roll on the Church record, that they are bap- 
tized in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, and 
have the seed of regeneration planted into the heart of the 
children, and, as they grow up, teach them the saving power 
of the Word of God from day to day, and never have them 
outside of the kingdom of God. When I remember the temp- 
tations of my boyhood days, and of my young manhood, I 
am prepared to say to-day that if my parents had not given 
me to God before I was running things, I would this morning 
be a child of the devil; and I am only surprised, when I 
consider the carelessness of some parents, that any young- 
people are in the Church of God to-day. "Many are called, 
but few are chosen." 

And why are there so few chosen? Because so many do 
not want to be chosen. Jesus wept over the many who 
would not be saved, when he said, "How often would I have 
gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her 
chickens under her wings, and ye would not!" Sin means 
death and destruction, and the older sin grows, and the more 
it multiplies unforgiven in a man, the more it takes a man 
captive and makes his mind stubborn, and at last he resists 
to the end the Holy Spirit, and dies in a lost condition. It 
is said of one man in our text this morning that when the 
great King came in and saw him without a wedding garment 
on, that he was speechless. Two weeks ago I spoke to you 
of silenced sinners; last Sunday I spoke to you of sick 
sinners; and this morning, as God shall help me, I want to 
speak to you of 

SPEECHLESS SINNERS. 

I. They do not become speechless at once. In the first- 
place the speechless sinners begin with their ill manners. 
"The kingdom of heaven is like unto a certain king, which 
made a marriage for his son, and sent forth his servants to 
call them that were bidden to the wedding ; and they would 
not come. Again, he sent forth other servants, saying, Tell 
them which were bidden, Behold, I have prepared my din- 
ner ; my oxen and my fatlings are killed, and all things are 



736 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

ready : come unto the marriage. But they made light of it, 
and went their ways, one to his farm; another to his 
merchandise." It is not hard to understand what this 
parable means. The king himself is God, the Father; His 
Son is Jesus Christ; the Church of God is His bride; the 
marriage has come; the feast is ready. The Crucifixion 
took place; the Lamb of God was slain for the sins of the 
world. The prophets went out first and asked the people 
to come; then after their death the apostles went out, and 
one after the other was sent to tell them that all things are 
ready; and at last the world saw and heard the messengers 
go out into the highways and hedges calling the heathen 
to come to God. Our forefathers were all heathen, and had 
it not been for the fact that God sent His messengers out 
into the highways, you and I would be heathen to-day. When 
the first invitation went out, the very first thing they did 
was to shoio their ill manners. They made light of the invi- 
tation; they went their ways. Nothing makes a man so 
ill-mannerly as sin. It is sin that makes the young man of 
to-day so ill-mannerly when a man of God goes to him and 
invites him to come to the class, or to church, to prepare to 
meet his God. There are young men in the city of Mans- 
field to-day, if I would go to them to-morrow and ask them 
to go five miles to favor me, they would do it, but when they 
know that I come to ask them to come to the Friday even- 
ing class, they try to slip out of the back door — making 
light of the invitation, showing their ill manners more when 
invited to prepare to meet their God than on any other 
occasion in life, not realizing that some time the tongue 
that speaks so ill-manneredly shall become speechless. 

II. Some of them went their ways, some of them made 
light of it, and some of them paid no attention — all ill-man- 
nered; but the next step they take is to cultivate in their 
hearts the spirit of murder. "And the remnant took his 
servants^ and entreated them spitefully, and slew them." 
The prophets nearly all died by being murdered. John the 
Baptist, that great man of God, was murdered. Out of the 
twelve apostles, only one died a natural death ; eleven were 
killed by the murderous people who received the invitation 
and wow Id not come. You have all heard of the martyrs of: 



TWENTIETH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. 73? 

old. Read Pox's Book of Martyrs and see how many mill- 
ions of people in the first three centuries of the Christian 
era laid down their lives because of the murderous spirit 
in the hearts of the people who afterwards shall become 
speechless. And was it only in the past that men were mar- 
tyrs? Are they not dying in Armenia every year by the 
thousands on account of their faith? Are not the mission- 
aries suffering to-day in heathen lands? Isn't it a fact that 
every man, unless he becomes a child of God, has enmity 
in his heart. The Bible truthfully tells us that "the carnal 
mind is enmity against God." Man does not by nature love 
God any more than darkness loves the light, and just because 
darkness does not love the light, and the natural man does 
not love God, when the invitation is given to the marriage 
feast, the people either go their ways, with their ill man- 
ners or come with murderous spirits, grasp the servants, 
persecute them, and finally slay them. "And the remnant 
took his servants." Whose servants? The King's servants. 
You cannot strike at a man of God without striking at your 
God Himself ; for Christ said : "He that heareth you, hear- 
eth Me; and he that despiseth you despiseth Me; and he 
that despiseth Me despiseth Him that sent Me." They did 
not simply take the King's servants, but they first abused 
them, entreated them spitefully, and finally took their very 
lives. The ashes cry out from earth to heaven all around 
this globe of the murderous spirit of those whose tongues in 
the future shall be speechless. 

III. Not only do we find that the people have murder 
in their hearts, as well as their ill manners, but some of 
them eventually set their hearts on money — "went their 
ways, one to his farm ; another to his merchandise." In the 
seventh verse it is said : "But when the* king heard thereof, 
he was wroth; and he sent forth his armies, and destroyed 
those murderers, and burned up their city." What gain 
was there in these men going out to their farms and going 
to their merchandise? Afterwards their city was burned. 
You cannot get away from God, and yet there are so many 
people in the world in the present day who are still out of 
the house of God because of their farms, because of their 
business. There are men who are not doing a great deal 

47 



738 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

through the week who are bound to straighten up their 
books on Sunday; there are a great many men who cannot 
attend Divine service because they must go and see their 
farms; there are men who are seldom at Divine service be- 
cause their whole hearts are set on their professions or 
their business, and their object is to get more money, to put 
up another block in the city, to own another bank account, 
to own stock in another mine, and so on, and the very cry 
of their souls is : "More money ! More money ! More 
money!" And that is the cry of the very people who some 
day shall hear, as these people heard, that "Titus and his 
army is burning up our city," so there shall be a Titus and 
an army come and burn up your city which you have got- 
ten by simply rejecting the invitation to the great marriage 
feast of the Lamb of God. Did you ever stop to think that 
the time is coming very soon when you must leave back 
everything in this world? What is the difference whether 
the city burns while you are living, or you leave the city 
when you begin to burn? 

IV. These people whose tongues shall be speechless 
cannot hinder God's missionaries, even though they mis- 
treat those who give the invitation, and slay them. "Then 
saith he to his servants, the wedding is ready, but they 
which were bidden were not worthy. Go ye therefore into 
the highways, and as many as ye shall find, bid to the mar- 
riage. So those servants went out into the hightways, and 
gathered together all as many as they found, both bad and 
good, and the wedding was furnished with guests." We 
must all recognize that though the world is bad, there are 
some people who are better than others. There is a class 
you can call good people; there is a class you can call bad 
people, but the Lord God does not draw the line and say, 
"I will invite the good people and not the bad;" He sends 
the invitation to every one and says, "Come to the marriage 
feast, for it is now ready," and when people will not accept 
the invitation when it comes again and again, God says, 
"Let those people go; they are not worthy." I tell you we 
cannot spend all our lives running after you alone. Do 
not think for a single moment that because you have been 
invited time and again to prepare to meet your God, that 



TWENTIETH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. 739 

you will be invited every day for the next thousand days; 
do not imagine that God is going after you forever. Just 
as He left the children of Israel when they rejected the 
invitation, and went out among the heathen with His invi- 
tation, just so He will leave that home where the young 
man has been asked to come and prepare to meet his God 
time and again, and say, "The world is large and if you will 
not come I will go and look after others." I say this to-day 
as a warning to some families who may be sitting before me. 
When you have been invited to prepare to meet your God, 
by your pastors whose tongues are now silent, and you 
have been invited again by your present servant, and so 
on, time after time, do not be surprised if you have been 
invited the last time, and do not think, either, for a single 
moment, because you will not accept the invitation, that the 
Church of God will go down, that God's work is going to 
be hindered. God is going to have heaven full. God is 
going to save immortal souls, and if some will not accept 
the invitation, there are others who will, and the tongues 
that shall be speechless in the future cannot hinder the 
preaching of the Gospel to-day. It is going on. Will you 
accept the invitation, or will you not? 

V. These people whose tongues will finally be speech- 
less, will not ivear the wedding garment. "And when the 
king came in to see the guests, he saw there a man which 
had not on a wedding garment." You will remember in the 
Oriental countries when there is a wedding the garment is 
furnished for the guest; you step up to the door and there 
you are asked to take off your sandals, and put on the 
special wedding garment prepared for you. It is said that 
this man went in with his own garment, and the king said 
unto him, "Friend, how earnest thou in hither not having 
a wedding garment? And he was speechless." "Then said 
the king to the servants, Bind him hand and foot, and take 
him away, and cast him into outer darkness; there shall be 
weeping and gnashing of teeth." In other words, the man 
became speechless who would not wear the wedding gar- 
ment. And thus you have the picture of the man who does 
not want to wear the garment of Christ's righteousness; 
there you have the difference between a self-righteous moral- 



740 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

ist, and a child of God. The self-righteous moralist wants 
to go to heaven because he is so good; he wants to wear his 
own garment; he talks about how good he is; how he pays 
his debts and how he loves his neighbor; and how he does 
not curse nor swear; how he does not drink nor smoke; 
how much better he is than every one else ; and thinks, there- 
fore, when he comes to die that he is going right to heaven 
with his own garment. Mark what I tell you, the man who 
stands before God with his own garment on, will be cast 
out where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth; his 
tongue will be forever speechless. 

VI. That leads me to the thought that those who are to 
beco7ne speechless will soon forever have their mouths closed. 
"And when the king came in to see the guests, he saw there 
a man which had not on a wedding garment; and he saith 
unto him, Friend, how earnest thou in hither not having a 
wedding garment? And he was speechless." There was no 
reply to give. This great king treated him very politely, 
but he knew it was contrary to law to step in there without 
a wedding garment; he knew he had done wrong; f he knew 
he could not stand before the king and give him a reply; 
consequently he simply held his tongue, and was thrown 
out into outer darkness, and there was weeping and gnash- 
ing of teeth ; his tongue was there forever silent. Think of 
the thousands of people who are talking to-day all over this 
world ; they have been invited time and again to prepare to 
meet their God; they are talking, and talking, and talking; 
they are murmuring, and murmuring, and murmuring; in 
their hearts they are murdering, and murdering, and mur- 
dering; they are going on with the determination of wear- 
ing their own garments, and stand before God with no 
other, and then, some of these days they will stand before 
God, and He will say, "How did you come in here with your 
own garment on, instead of the garment of My righteous- 
ness?" and He will order the angels of God to bind them 
hand and foot and cast them out into outer darkness, and 
there they will be speechless; their tongues will be silent 
forever. 

But that is not all : They will weep, and weep without 
tears. It is said that the worst sufferings one can endure 



TWENTIETH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. 741 

in this world is to be in so much trouble that you cannot 
shed a tear. I have in mind a man in my own neighborhood, 
whose house burned down, his wife died ; his son, going after 
a physician was killed on the road; two children died soon 
after, and the four were laid to rest. I saw that man myself, 
out in the orchard on his knees, simply sighing, moaning, 
pale, and not a tear in his eye — in perfect agony. What 
will be the agony of those when their tongues a*e stiff and 
their mouths are closed! 

And while they are weeping, but shedding no tears, while 
their mouths are closed you can hear their teeth gnashing 
together. Gnashing at whom? At themselves, for having 
been invited, for having rejected the invitation, and for 
having lost their immortal souls ; they will gnash their teeth 
at those who called themselves ministers of the Gospel, who 
told them there was no hell, and that they need not be 
afraid; they will gnash their teeth and say, "Here we are, 
and there is the preacher that told us there was no hell, 
and O ! that we could open our mouths long enough to gnash 
our teeth at him." I pity the man who is so misleading his 
people that on the great Judgment Day they will gnash 
their teeth at him. Worse than the greatest murderer that 
ever lived; worse than the greatest drunkard that ever 
died in the ditch ; worse than the man that burned the city, 
is the preacher of the Gospel who is not true to God, and 
does not bring the message of God's eternal Word to the 
people. Some people will say that "Long is one of those 
cranks that preaches hell fire." I tell you if there is no such 
a place as hell for those who reject the Savior this Book is a 
book of lies, and the sooner we pull down the churches the 
better. The Word of God stands, and do you suppose that 
God Himself would have been so foolish as to give His Son 
to die for nothing? When He said, "It is finished," what 
was finished? Your redemption. Redemption from what? 
From a hell that never was? Oh, foolishness! In that day, 
unless you accept God's invitation here, your tongue will be 
speechless. 

Where is the kingdom of God? "And Jesus answered 
and spake unto them again by parables, and said, The king- 
dom of heaven is like unto a certain king, which made a 



742 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

marriage for his son." Where is the kingdom of heaven? 
Can you find in your geography where it is located? Is it 
found up in the heavens above? Is it found on some distant 
star? Is it found here on earth? Where is this kingdom? 
Yes, it is found in heaven above, but not only there. Yes, 
it is found on earth, but you cannot find it in your geog- 
raphy. Where is the kingdom of heaven? The kingdom 
of heaven is where the Son, and the Bride are, at the mar- 
riage feast; and the Church of God is that Bride, and Jesus 
Christ, who is here on earth all the time with her, is the 
Bridegroom, and the marriage is taking place all the time. 
When you and I become Christians we are united with Him, 
and then it is true as Jesus said one time "The kingdom 
of God is within you." Where is the kingdom of God? Can 
you find your soul in a geography? Your soul is in you. 
Where is the kingdom of God? Can you find it in the books? 
It is found in your hearts. It is found on earth, and just 
as the air does not leave the earth, the kingdom of God 
does not leave this world. "My oxen and my fatlings are 
killed, and all things are ready: come unto the marriage." 
We are about to celebrate the Holy Supper once more. How 
it delights our souls to see the multitude standing before 
this altar this morning to receive the body and the blood of 
their Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, according to His Word. 
Bemember the marriage is ready. The Savior said, "Come 
and partake." Before your eyes are bread and wine, but re- 
member, there is something more there than bread and wine. 
"Take, eat; this is My body. And He took the cup, and 
gave thanks, and gave it to them, saying, Drink ye all of it; 
for this is My blood of the New Testament, which is shed 
for you and for many for the remission of sins. This do in 
remembrance of Me." This is the invitation of the King's 
Son, Himself. The supper is now ready, and let us come 
with thankful hearts and partake of it. Amen. 



TWENTY=FIRST SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. 



ONE O'CLOCK. 



john 4 : 46-54. 

80 Jesus came again into Cana of Galilee, where He made the water 
wine. And there was a certain nobleman, whose son was sick at 
Capernaum. When he heard that Jesus was come out of Judaea into 
Galilee, he went unto Him, and besought Him that He would come down, 
and heal his son; for he was at the point of death. Then said Jesus unto 
him, Except ye see signs and wonders, ye will not believe. The nobleman 
saith unto Him, Sir, come down ere my child die. Jesus saith unto him, Go 
thy way; thy son liveth. And the man believed the word that Jesus had 
spoken unto him, and he went his way. And as he was now going down, his 
servants met him, and told him, saying, Thy son liveth. Then enquired he of 
them the hour when he began to amend. And they said unto him, Yesterday 
at the seventh hour the fever left him. So the father knew that it was at the 
same hour, in which Jesus said unto him, Thy son liveth: and himself be- 
lieved, and his whole house. This is again the second miracle that Jesus did, 
when He was come out of Judaea into Galilee. 

Sanctify us, O Lord, through Thy Truth : 

Thy "Word is Truth. Amen. 



Beloved in Christ:- — 

As Christians we must recognize that there is a Provi- 
dence ruling over us, that is guiding and directing us in the 
affairs of life; but how many Christians are willing to be- 
lieve that Providence counts tne hours and the minutes and 
the seconds of our lives? We are told in this text that at 
the seventh hour this nobleman found Jesus. He likely 
started early in the morning from Capernaum, and walked 
for seven hours, teaching us this great lesson, that Provi- 
dence is watching over us every hour of the day, every hour 
of our lives. Xot only do we notice here by the Holy Spirit 
that this miracle took place at the seventh hour, but we 
notice the difference between one day and the other. When 

743 



744 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

this nobleman came home he said to the servants who met 
him, Yesterday at the seventh hour, Jesus said so and so. 
Now it may be that this yesterday was the same day, accord- 
ing to our reckoning. You will remember that in those days 
they began to reckon the day from six o'clock in the morn- 
ing ; the seventh hour would be one o'clock in the afternoon ; 
the day ended at six o'clock in the evening ; if this man left 
home at six o'clock in the morning and it took him seven 
hours to reach Jesus, it must have taken him seven more 
hours to reach home again ; consequently he must have met 
his servants, or his people at home, somewhere between seven 
and eight o'clock at night. Any hour after six may have 
been spoken of in those days, according to our reckoning, as 
yesterday; in other words, the day ended at six o'clock in 
the evening; at seven o'clock in the evening they would 
have called five o'clock, yesterday. At one o'clock yesterday, 
the very moment that Jesus said "Go thy way; thy son 
liveth," the servants announced, when they met this noble- 
man, that the boy got well. So you will notice it makes ho 
difference whether Jesus is standing right by our side, or 
whether He is up at Cana and the boy lies down at Caper- 
naum, when He speaks the word, it is done. The Holy 
Spirit has been pleased to notice that this miracle took place 
at one o'clock, and let that be our leading thought to-day: 

ONE O^CLOCK. 

I. It is time that we all so live that we can go back 
where we have been before with a good name. Yes, let us 
so live that no difference where we have been, we can go 
back there without shame. "So Jesus came again into Cana 
of Galilee, where He made the water wine." In the last 
verse of our text it is said, "This is again the second miracle 
that Jesus did when He was come out of Judaea into Gali- 
lee." In other words, you all remember the very first miracle 
that Jesus performed after He entered His ministry was at 
Cana, when He turned the water into wine; time passed .on 
and He came back to the same place again and was received 
by His friends, because Jesus always so lived that He could 
go back where He had been. 



TWENTY-FIRST SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. 745 

As Jesus did, so we should do. IIow many people there 
are who dare not go back to their own homes any more! 
How many people there are who are so living that they feel 
that they must move away where they are not known! While 
in the far West a few years ago, speaking to an old citizen 
of San Francisco, I asked him why it Avas that there were 
so many ungodly people here in the West, and why it was 
there was no respect for the Sabbath day; he said, "I will 
tell you why. We have very many very good people here in 
the West, but we also have a class of people who have com- 
mitted crimes in the East, and had to leave home, and came 
out here, and they have sown a leaven that has leavened the 
whole lump — it is an ungodly people." Stop and think 
what that means in a community, to have people in that com- 
munity who have left their homes and cannot go back as 
Jesus went back to Cana of Galilee. It will always be one 
of the most pleasant thoughts of my ministry to know that 
the first three years and a half I had the pleasure of preach- 
ing to my aged father, to my brothers and school comrades, 
to my old friends and acquaintances, and it is a pleasure 
to-day to know that I can go home and meet all my people 
and squarely look them in the face, and not be ashamed to 
meet them. Let us all strive so to live that whenever we 
come back home we can do as Jesus did when He went back 
to Cana of Galilee. It is one o'clock. 

II. One o'clock, and it is time that ice all go to Christ 
before we are overwhelmed with trouble. "And there was 
a certain nobleman, whose son was sick at Capernaum. 
When he heard that Jesus was come out of Judea into 
Galilee, he w r ent unto Him, and besought Him that He would 
come down, and heal his son; for he was at the point of 
death." This nobleman had great trouble in his home. He 
was one of the rulers of that country, and his son most 
likely would have become heir to that position, though it 
may have been but a minor one ; he felt that this boy must 
live, if there was any possibility of saving his life. W r hen 
every physician had been called, when every thing had been 
done that human hands could do, when it was noticed that 
the boy was going down to the gates of death, he said, "I 
will go myself, though I have got to walk for seven hours, 



746 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

I am going to find Jesus, in order that I may get help for 
this boy of mine. We love to think of this man seeking 
Jesus in that hour; at the same time, how much greater 
pleasure it would give us to know that that king sought 
Jesus before the boy was sick. How much better it would 
have been if he had started out when the boy was well, and 
sought Jesus, and brought Him down to his home to in- 
struct that boy and the whole family, long before the boy 
was at the point of death. It is time, my friends, that we 
thank God for all our troubles. There are too many people 
who never thank God for a single trouble. We are to give 
thanks for all things. Any heathen can thank God for a 
rich harvest; any heathen can thank God for good health; 
any heathen can thank God for gold and silver; but who 
can thank God when the gold and the silver are taken away? 
Who can thank God when health is taken away? Who can 
thank God for trials and troubles that are hard to endure? 
Only the child of God. Therefore, I say it is one o'clock 
in history; it is one o'clock in your life and mine, and let 
us learn this morning to go to Jesus Christ while we are 
well, while we are in our clear minds, while we have the 
chance to learn more and more of God's eternal truth. It 
makes no difference though God should accept us in the last 
hour, we certainly would be filled with regret that we should 
spend our whole lives and do nothing to serve our Master. 
For that reason let us this morning emphasize this- great 
truth, It is one o'clock, and time right now that we go and 
search our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. 

III. Again, It is time that we stop ashing God to give 
us some loonderful signs before we believe Him. "Then 
said Jesus unto him, Except ye see signs and wonders, ye 
will not believe." How many people there are in the present 
day who seem to think that God ought to perform some 
wonderful miracle in order to demonstrate to us that He is 
the true and living God. How many people there are who 
say they would like to have lived in the days of Jesus Christ, 
or in the days of the apostles, in order that they might have 
seen some of these great miracles performed. Did you ever 
stop to think that that very desire to see miracles per- 
formed to believe in Jesus Christ, is wrong? Why did! 



TWENTY-FIRST SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. 747 

the Lord Jesus always tell His disciples after He had per- 
formed a miracle, to say nothing about these things? Be- 
cause it was His desire that the people should believe I lis 
Word, iudependent of the miracles. And have we not got 
the miracles of God recorded? Has he not raised the dead? 
Has He not given sight to the blind? Has he not given 
hearing to the deaf? Has He not made well the crippled? 
>Yhat more do you want? The very fact that we should 
ask God for signs to-day shows that we are not satisfied 
with the Bible; shows that we are not satisfied with the 
record which He has given us, and with the wonderful things 
that He has done. The man who to-day asks God to give 
another sign before he will believe, is almost guilty of blas- 
phemy. Have you forgotten the recent incident that took 
place in Chicago on the seventh day of last June? Some 
of you may not have read it, and others may have forgot- 
ten it. Let me read a few words from the daily paper of 
that date: 

"Chicago, June 7. Professing disbelief in God and fol- 
lowing his statement with a challenge to the Almighty to 
demonstrate His power, Julian Kenfro, aged 21, was sud- 
denly stricken deaf and dumb. This strange experience be- 
fell the young man late last Tuesday night and he still is a 
deaf mute. Since being stricken he has professed belief in 
Christ, and has gone to his home in Shreveport, La., where 
under a Christian's mother's care he will study the Scrip- 
ture with the hope that ultimately he will be able to preach 
the Gospel from pulpit and platform. Details of the strange 
case became known only yesterday. Renfro was born of 
religious parents in Shreveport, but did not take kindly to 
the solemn teachings of his mother. He left home several 
years ago, coming to Chicago to w T ork in the office of a 
northside tannery as shipping clerk. Last September he en- 
gaged a room and there met several young men with whom 
he formed a close friendship. Four of the young men were 
playing whist last Tuesday night, when their conversation 
took a religious turn and they abandoned the game. Three 
of the four expressed a belief in God, but Renfro declared 
he was an Agnostic. "I would believe in God if I could," 
he said, "but I read a good deal of Ingersoll's writings and 



748 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

am unable to have faith. If God would demonstrate Him- 
self to me in some way, for instance, if He should strike me 
deaf and dumb and blind — I might admit His existence." 

Notice what a challenge; that was asking a sign, and 
that sign should be nothing else than to be struck deaf, 
dumb, and even blind. God had much mercy on him and 
saved his eyes, but this is what He did with him : 

"One of the young men was about to reply to the argu- 
ment when he noticed Renfro turn pale. The next moment 
the skeptic threw his arms out before him as if warding off 
a blow, and convulsively placed his hands before his face. 
An instant later he fell forward, off his chair and to the 
floor. Dr. O. G. Draper, 205 East Chicago Avenue, found 
that Renfro had become deaf. Renfro's companions, who 
are members of the Moody Bible Institute, look upon his 
afflictions as a direct rebuke from the Almighty." 

I quote this to show you that the true and living God is 
still with us, but especially that it is a sin for us in the 
present day to want God to perform miracles before we will 
believe in Him. His word is complete, and the greatest 
faith is the one, that will trust God whether He performs 
miracles or not. It is one o'clock and God's Word is per- 
fect, and it is your duty and mine to accept Him without 
signs and wonders to be added to those already given. 

IV. It is one o'clock, and let us notice, That it is time 
that toe all cling to the person of Jesus Christ, prayerfully. 
"The nobleman saith unto Him, Sir, come down ere my 
child die." Notice that the nobleman did not hunt for some 
physician; he did not hunt up one or two of the disciples, 
but he went directly to the Lord Jesus Christ Himself, cling- 
ing to His person, and to no one else. How many useless 
prayers there are to-day without any Christ in them. Let 
us as a Christian people first learn that just as there is only 
one Way to heaven, for Christ says: "I am the Way, the 
Truth, and the Life: no man cometh unto the Father but 
by He," so there is only one Avay to pray aright, and that is 
to pray i*3 the name of the only Way that leads to heaven. 
If God the Father in heaven has only one Son, and that 
one Son is Jesus Christ, then that Father cannot be our 
Father until His Sod is also pur Father ; and when the Son 



TWENTY-FIRST SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. 749 

of God becomes our Father, by the Holy Spirit, then I lis 
Father is our Father, and by that Sou we must go to the 
Father, and that is the same Son we should cling to — the 
God-man. The nobleman did not hunt human help but he 
hunted Him who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life; he 
hunted Him who is the Counsellor; the Mighty God; the 
Everlasting Father ; the Prince of Peace, and nothing could 
keep him back. He was not satisfied to send his servants; 
he wasn't satisfied to send his neighbors; he wanted to go 
personally and see the Lord Jesus Christ Himself, and cling 
to Him, and hold to Him nntil he was assured that his son 
should get well. Oh, it is one o'clock, my friends, in history, 
and it is time that you and I hold to Jesus Christ, the God- 
man, let come what will. 

V. Not only should toe hold to His person, but tee 
should also hold to His Word. "Jesus saith unto him, Go 
thy way; thy son liveth. And the man believed the Word 
that Jesus had spoken unto him, and he went his way." 
He held right to that Word and would not let go of it, and 
went home with that promise, "Thy son liveth." He does 
not stop a single moment and say, "What if I find him dead 
when I get home?" He did not say, "Lord, come on down; 
Thou canst not heal him if Thou wilt not go with me." The 
Word satisfied him, and he held to it, and walked down to- 
ward Capernaum, keeping hold of the promise, until he met 
his servants, and they cried out, "Thy son liveth." Let us 
hold to the literal Word of God. There is nothing that is 
hurting the Church of God on earth to-day like putting 
human opinions above the plain declarations of God's eter- 
nal Word. Why do we not all believe the same about the 
Lord's Supper? Because people will not take God's lit- 
eral Word. That is the only reason. Why do we not all 
think the same concerning baptism? Because some will 
not take God's literal Word. Why do we not all believe 
the same concerning the Office of the Keys? Because some 
do not believe that God gave to the Church the power to 
say, "Thy sins are forgiven thee." Why do we not hold to 
all the glorious promises of this Book? Because we are con- 
stantly doubting that Jesus actually meant what He said; 
and if we give up one chapter, or one verse, or one little 



750 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

word, we give up the whole B.ook. If God did not tell me 
the truth in John 3, how do I know He told the truth in 
John 6, or in John 10? If God did not tell me the truth 
in the 53d chapter of Isaiah, how do I know He tells the 
truth when it is said in Matthew, and Mark, and Luke, and 
John, that He laid down His life for us on Calvary? Let us 
then from this morning remember that it is one o'clock; 
that Providence has set the hour when every man should 
settle once and forever that when God speaks, we are going 
to hold fast to that promise. 

VI. It is one o'clock, and let us remember that it is 
just time that our faith in the Lord Jesus becomes a little 
more contagious than it really is. "And as he was now 
going down, his servants met him, and told him, saying, 
Thy son liveth. Then enquired he of them the hour when 
he began to amend. And they said unto him, Yesterday at 
the seventh hour the fever left him. So the father knew 
that it was in the same hour, in the which Jesus said unto 
him, Thy son liveth: and himself believed, and his whole 
house." I suppose I have men, or representatives, sitting 
before me this morning, of families, some of whom are not 
yet children of God, and if I could say anything now that 
would help you to bring all of your household to the Master, 
you surely would feel highly repaid for hearing this mes- 
sage. Let me come to you now in the name of God, and tell 
you it is one o'clock, and it is just time that your faith 
become so contagious that the whole family will become be- 
lievers in Christ. How did this whole household become 
Christians? In the first place by the father's becoming a 
Christian. This nobleman had heard of the wonderful 
Christ; he had heard that He is able to raise the dead; he 
had heard that He is able to heal the sick; he had heard 
that He never fails when He speaks the Word, and, having 
heard the Word, he became a believer in Christ; and, being 
a believer in Christ, there was nothing too much for him 
to do, and no way too far, and, sick as his boy was, he starts 
out Avith the determination that he is going to find the Great 
Physician, and He found Him; and it was one o'clock. 
Would to God it were one o'clock in our home to-day. And 
when he found the Savior, he said, "Come down and help 



TWENTY-FIBST SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. 751 

niy son before he dies ;" "oh," says Christ to this nobleman, 
"you have got a faith, but it is not the right kind; unless 
you see some wonderful work or miracle and demonstration, 
you think there is no help; I want you to understand that 
I can stay right where I am and heal your boy. Go thy way; 
thy son liveth." That moment this nobleman had a faith 
stronger than before; that moment he settled in his heart 
and mind that his son was going to get well, and he walked 
on down toward Capernaum, and he noticed the servants 
coming up the road, with the joyful news that the boy was 
living. It is no surpise to him; he knew his boy was 
living before he saw his servants; he knew the very hour 
when Jesus said, "Thy son liveth ;" it was the seventh hour 
— one o'clock. He said, "When did my boy get better?" 
"Why, yesterday, at one o'clock;" "Well, sir," he says, "that 
is the very moment that Jesus said, "Thy son liveth." And 
this caused an interest to arise in the minds of those ser- 
vants, How could that One help away up there at Cana, when 
this boy, this son of yours, was down here at Capernaum? 
And on the road home the father instructed those men as 
to the great God-man up at Cana, and told them it was the 
same place where He turned the water into wine; this 
Mighty God, the Everlasting Father; the Prince of Peace. 
Dear servants, if He can help my boy, He can help you, and 
this man treated his servants as every man ought to treat 
his servants, in such a way that they were glad to run out 
and bring Him a message; they were glad to stand by his 
side and learn. How many Christian families there are 
who have servants in their homes, and treat those servants 
more like dogs than like human beings, and instead of lead* 
ing those servants to Jesus Christ, they drive them toward 
hell with their ungodly ways in that home. This man made 
up his mind that his God should be his servants' God, and 
he taught them concerning the Savior, and concerning this 
wonderful Physician. And when they came home they saw 
the boy sitting up, and well, and they told the boy who 
helped him, that it was his God and Savior ; and the mother 
was interested — What mother would not be interested in 
her son? — and she sat down and listened to the wonderful 
story, and I can see them all standing around in the home 



752 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

wanting to know more and more of that wonderful Physi- 
cian, the God-man who helped this boy when so far away, 
and they talked, and talked, of the love of Jesus, and of the 
mercy of Jesus, and of this great Physician, until they all 
made up their minds it is a good thing to have all in the 
household children of God; and I can see that great noble- 
man, as he says to his wife, and to his boy, and to his serv- 
ants, "Let the God that healed our boy be our God ; let the 
Savior that saved this boy save us all; let us kneel in 
prayer;" I can see the nobleman's household all down on 
their knees in prayer, thanking God for that wonderful de- 
liverance. And the faith was so contagious it must have 
gone out into that whole village, into that whole country. 
In other words, it is one o'clock, and it is time that every 
one of us so live the life that Jesus would have us live on 
earth, that those all around us will be compelled to give 
their hearts to God; that is what we ought to aim for in 
this life, not to have such a cold faith that the world does 
not know where we stand; that the world does not know 
what we love. Live for Christ, and live Christ on earth so 
that the world can see that you have been with the Master. 
And now, my friends, I have preached long enough and 
it is one o'clock, and it is time that we close, and go our 
several ways and believe and live what we have heard this 
morning. Amen. 

PRAYER. 

Our Father, who art in heaven ; Hallowed be Thy name ; Thy kingdom 
come ; Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our 
daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass 
against us. Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil, for Thine 
is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever and ever. Amen. 



TWENTY=SECOND SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY 



TWO THINGS SINNERS CAN NOT DO WITH THEIR SINS. 



Matt. 18 : 23-35. 



€HEREFORE is the kingdom of heaven likened unto a certain king, 
which would take account of his servants. And when he had begun 
to reckon, one was brought unto him, which owed him ten thousand 
talents. But forasmuch as he had not to pay, his lord commanded him to 
he sold, and his wife, and children, and all that he had, and payment to be 
made. The servant therefore fell down, and worshipped him, saying, Lord, 
have patience with me and I will pay thee all. Then the lord of that servant 
was moved with compassion and loosed him, and forgave him the debt. 
But the same servant went out, and found one of his fellow-servants, which 
owed him a hundred pence; and he laid his hands on him, and took him by 
the throat, saying, Pay me that thou owest. And his fellow-servant fell down 
at his feet, and besought him, saying, Have patience with me, and I will pay 
thee all. And he would not : but went and cast him into prison, till he should 
pay the debt. So when his fellow-servants saw what was done, they were very 
sorry, and came and told unto their lord all that was done. Then his lord, 
after that he had called him, said unto him, O thou wicked servant, I for- 
gave thee all that debt, because thou desiredst me: Shouldest not thou also 
have had compassion on thy fellow servant, even as I had pity on thee? And 
his lord was wroth, and delivered him to the tormentors, till he should pay 
all that was due unto him. So likewise shall my heavenly Father do also 
unto you, if ye from your hearts forgive not every one his brother their 
trespasses. 

Sanctify us, O Lord, through Thy Truth : 
Thy Word is Truth. Amen. 



Dearly Beloved in Christ: — 

The same God who so loves us as to have given His only 
Son to die that we might have forgiveness, and have eternal 
life, is the same God who gave to this world the first sword. 
When the angel was placed at the garden of Eden, God 
placed a sword in that angel's hand. Let us not forget that 
the power of this world and the power of the kingdom of 

48 753 



754 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

God are two different powers. And let us not forget that 
the kingdom of this world has the prerogative of doing jus- 
tice, and not of forgiving. I cannot imagine a greater calam- 
ity to befall our nation than simply to have a proclamation 
go out that henceforth every thief shall be excused and for- 
given ; that every murderer from now on shall go free ; that 
every crime shall be blotted out. Dear friends, the Lord 
never gave a government the power to say to the thief and 
to the murderer and to the liar, Go on, it is all right. In 
order that you and I may sleep at home in perfect ease and 
not look for the murderer every night; in order that we 
may have peace in our country, it is demanded of the law 
that it be fulfilled and obeyed. On the other hand, let us 
not forget that there is another kingdom besides the king- 
dom of this world ; there is the Kingdom for which we pray 
every time we pray the Lord's prayer, "Thy kingdom come/' 
and that kingdom has the right to demand justice, and does 
demand it ; but that kingdom has also a plan by which 
those that are guilty of death can be forgiven. The Gospel 
lesson to-day follows the great question of Peter, How many 
times shall a man forgive his brother? Seven times? The 
answer comes back, Seventy times seven. We are all sin- 
ners. What shall we do with our sins? May the Holy 
Spirit help us this morning to show you clearly 

TWO THINGS SINNERS CANNOT DO WITH THEIR SINS. 

I. They cannot hide them. 
II. They cannot divide them. 

I. Our sins we cannot hide. "Therefore is the kingdom 
of heaven likened unto a certain king, which would take ac- 
count of his servants. And when he had begun to reckon, 
one was brought unto him, which owed him ten thousand 
talents." This man could not hide those ten thousaand 
talents; he could not hide that debt. Those ten thousand 
talents represent the sins which you and I have naturally 
resting upon us. Just as little as this man could hide those 
ten thousand talents from his lord or from himself, or 



TWENTY-SECOND SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. i .).) 

from his fellow men, just so little we poor sinners can 
hide our sins, — from (Unl, none at all; — from man, not all. 

1. From God Ave cannot hide a single sin. This lord 
knew very well that this hum owed him ten thousand tal- 
ents; it was not about ten thousand, but exactly ten thou- 
sand. There is One who knows exactly how many times you 
and I have sinned ; there is an Eye that is always open over 
us, day and night; not one sinful thought has escaped Him ; 
not one sinful word ever fell from your tongue without His 
knowledge ; not one sinful deed have you ever done that He 
did not charge up against you. Knowing that we have 
sinned against the first commandment, which tells us who 
the true and living God is, we have sinned against the 
second commandment, which tells us not to curse, swear, 
conjure, lie or deceive; we have sinned against the third 
commandment and have not kept the Sabbath Day as holy 
as we should; how often we have disrespected our parents 
and superiors ; hoAV often we have had thoughts toward our 
fellow men that were not from above; how often we have 
looked upon the opposite sex with thoughts not as pure 
as they should have been; how often we have desired the 
possession of things that we have not earned with the sweat 
of our faces; how often we have told that which would not 
bear the test on the Judgment Day as to veracity: how often 
we have coveted things owned by those who desired them; 
how often we have brought sin down on the future gen- 
erations. Now we do not know all these sins, but God does ; 
and He, knowing them, how can you hide them? 

God knows not only the number, but He knows the pen- 
alty. The penalty was that this man had to give up his 
family on account of the debt which he was not able to pay. 
There is a justice that demands that even God's laws must 
be fulfilled to the letter. Do not think for a single moment 
that God is so loose with His own law that you can trample 
upon it as you please, and that He pays no attention to it. 
God's laws are just and right, and God is just and right, and 
every sin that is ever committed demands punishment; it 
must be punished either in you or in some one else. You 
cannot hide vour sins. 



756 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

Not only is it true that God knows the penalty, but it is 
just as true that He knows that you cannot pay the debt. 
"The servant therefore fell down and worshiped him say- 
ing, Lord, have patience with me, and I will pay thee all. 
Then the lord of that servant was moved with compassion, 
and loosed him, and forgave him the debt." Why did this 
lord have compassion on him and forgive him the debt? 
Because he knew very well that this man never could pay 
the debt of ten thousand talents. You will remember that 
in olden time they did not count money as we do, by putting 
a certain value on the individual piece of money, but it was 
weighed out, and sometimes the weight was this, and some- 
times it was that; sometimes there was this much value 
given to a talent, and sometimes a different amount, but it 
always ran from $1,000 to about $1,700. In other words, 
ten thousand talents would mean nothing less than ten 
million of dollars; it might mean as much as seventeen 
million of dollars. What a foolish thing it was for this 
poor man, with nothing in his possession, to say, "Have pa- 
tience with me and I will pay thee all," but it is, just as 
foolish for you to think, with your fifteen millions of sins 
resting upon you, yea, many times fifteen millions of sins, 
that you can make it right yourself. You might as well 
expect the dead out in yonder cemetery to rise from their 
graves this morning and try to pay off the mortgages they 
left on their farms, as to expect yourself, born in sin, and 
burdened down with your actual sins, to pay the debt your- 
self. God knows this, and, knowing that you cannot hide 
your sins, that you cannot number them, nor earn their for- 
giveness, He has compassion on you, and says, "I will forgive 
you all." 

Who did pay the debt? Look on Calvary. See the Son 
of God, the only Heir of Heaven, pouring out His life's 
blood for the sins of the world! Behold the Lamb of God, 
that taketh away the sins of the world ! Hear Him cry out, 
"It is finished!" What is finished? The payment of these 
ten thousand talents. 

2. Not only are these sins known to the Lord, all of 
them, but they are known to your fellow-men, some of them. 
Some of our sins are known to our fellow-men. I do not 



TWENTY-SECOND SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. 757 

believe (here is a man on earth that knows all my sins. God 
does. I do not believe there is a man on earth that knows 
all your sins. God does. 

But there is one thing we must not forget, and that is 
that you know your own sins a great deal better than you 
are willing to eonfess. Do you believe a man is actually 
so stupid that he does not know the difference between God 
the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, and simply "a Supreme 
Being?" Do you believe that a man is actually so dull that 
he does not know that when he curses and swears, conjures, 
lies and deceives by the name of God, that he is sinning? 
Do you believe that the people in the city of Mansfield, and 
in the whole world to-day, who are living this very day as 
if there were no God in heaven, as if there were no Bible, 
as if there were no Church, are actually so dull that they 
do not know they, are doing wrong? Do you believe that 
people can treat their parents like dogs, and turn them out 
of their homes, and not know that it is wrong? Do you be- 
lieve that people can go around hating their own neighbors, 
and wishing them out of the way, and not know, after all, 
in their own hearts, that they are murderers? Do you be- 
lieve that a man can live an impure life, and thereby plant 
the seeds of adultery and fornication and of divorce and of 
impure lives into future generations, and go home and lie 
down, and think he is doing all right? Do you believe that 
a man can go and unlock his neighbor's door and take out 
of that home what does not belong to him, and go home and 
say, "I have done right?" Do you believe a man can keep 
back ten cents worth of change because the other man does 
not know it, and think it is all right? Do you think any 
man is so stupid that when he lies, and does just what the 
devil did in the garden of Eden when he threw a world 
into the grave, and into the fire, and into death, and into 
hell, as to think he is" doing right? Do you believe that old 
Ahab could go and have his neighbor killed, and rob him 
of his vineyard, and think it was all right? Do vou believe 
he could eat the grapes out of that vineyard with a clear 
conscience? I tell you, my friends, these sins that you have 
committed are not all even hid from yourselves. 



758 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

Nor from your families. "But forasmuch as he had not 
to pay, his lord commanded him to be sold, and his wife, 
and children, and all that he had, and payment to be made." 
You cannot even hide your sins from your own families. 
This man was taken into custody and was told that he 
would have to sell his wife, and his servants, and his chil- 
dren; they knew all about his ten thousand talents. Do 
you believe that this man could have everything sold, wife 
children and all, and the family wouldn't know anything 
about it? Don't you know as you are standing before me 
here this morning that there is a sin in your own family 
that you are trying to hide? And just because you are try- 
ing to hide your sins, you are helping your own husbands 
and your own children to go to the deviL You know the 
sins of your families a great deal better than you acknowl- 
edge. And your own sins in your own family are known 
a great deal better than you think they are. That wife is 
not so ignorant that she cannot see that her husband is 
impure; those mothers are not so dull that they do not 
know that their boys are going to the devil. There are boys 
belonging to families right in this Church, after whom I 
have gone time and again, to bring them to the catechetical 
class, and they have said, "Yes, we will come," and they 
never show their faces. They will lie; they will do any- 
thing to get away from God's eternal Truth, and you may 
say what you please, you may not know it, but those- boys 
are going into a certain sin, and that sin will not allow 
the light of God's Word turned on; they are afraid of it; 
and I only mention this in order that I may have your united 
prayers for these boys ; they have got to be brought to God's 
kingdom before long, or they will never come; they have 
started wrong, and they are going wrong, and even if the 
steed of eternal death should go galloping down past here, 
down on the pavement of hell with these boys on its back, 
it would not be any more real than the facts I am stating 
to you this morning. Our families know better than we 
acknowledge, the sins of our own families. 

And it is not only true that their families know their 
sins, but it is also true that you cannot hide them from 
your fellowmen. How many people there are in this world 



TWENTY-SECOND SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. 759 

going on with their heads held high, wearing the garment 
of pride, who would try to make us believe they are the 
purest, but we know their hearts; they art 1 as black as hell. 
These fellow servants, when they saw this man that was 
forgiven of his ten thousand talents, go out and take one 
of his fellow servants by the throat and choke him, who 
only owed him an hundred pence, felt that he was so mean 
and so low that he must be reported at headquarters. So 
the whole committee went up to the lord of that servant 
and told the story, and the lord came back, and caught him, 
and put him in prison, and said, You have got to stay there 
now until you have paid the last farthing. Oh, if no one else 
will condemn us on the Judgment Day, our fellow servants 
will do it; they cannot stand it much longer. Do you sup- 
pose that I am going to see a woman treated like a brute 
in her own home, and not testify against that husband on 
the Judgment Day if necessary? Do you suppose that I 
am going to see a boy or girl run after by their parents, 
and pleaded with by their parents to do right, and they will 
not listen nor heed, and when I know these things, to keep 
quiet on the Judgment Day, if the occasion is given to 
speak? If we have any love and sympathy in our hearts 
for the oppressed, when we see them, who only owe an hun- 
dred pence, mistreated by those who have been forgiven 
their ten thousand talents, we must stand up and testify 
against such wrong. 

II. Not only can we not hide our sins, but we cannot 
divide them. May the good Lord take us all to heaven, but 
mark one thing, you cannot enter heaven and take one sin 
with you. You cannot divide them. All of them must be 
forgiven. This man owed ten thousand talents. The lord 
of that servant did not say, "I will forgive you nine thou- 
sand, and you will pay one thousand yourself." No. He 
had compassion on him, and forgive him the whole ten 
thousand talents. They all had to be forgiven. 

1. Not one sin can enter heaven. People sometimes 
say, "I haven't sinned very often." What is the difference? 
What is the difference, if you have sinned only once, and 
that sin is not forgiven, how are you going to get into 
heaven with that sin? An old serpent one time crept into 



760 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

the garden of Eden with one sin, and with that one sin he 
poisoned our first parents, and through them the human 
race, and with that sin he made a hell of earth; and do 
you suppose the Lord is going to permit that old serpent 
to enter the gates of heaven? And would you not be that 
serpent yourself if you were to take one sin unforgiven and 
go through the gates? Knowing and seeing what I have 
seen of sin, my prayer is, if I am unwilling to have every 
sin forgiven, may God never allow me to enter the gates of 
heaven. You may rest assured that He never will. Oh, the 
weight of those ten thousand talents! Oh, the weight of 
those sins of ours ! Yes, every honest soul must say, "I have 
not trusted God as I should" — a thousand talents ; I have 
taken the name of God in vain" — another thousand tal- 
ents ; "I have not kept the Sabbath Day as holy as I should" 
— another thousand talents; "I did say one unkind word 
to my mother" — four thousand talents ; "I did have a little 
spite in my heart against some one" — five thousand tal- 
ents ; "I did have a bad thought in my soul" — six thous- 
and talents; "I did one time take one little thing that was 
not right" — seven thousand talents ; "I did one time say 
what was not true" — eight thousand talents; "I did covet 
my neighbor's house" — nine thousand talents ; "I did covet 
my neighbor's wife, his servants, his cattle, etc.," — ten 
thousand talents. Oh, the burden of my sins! What shall 
I do? There is only one thing to be done, and that is for 
the God of mercy to come and have compassion on us, and 
forgive us — forgive us of all these sins. You cannot divide 
them. You cannot have nine thousand sins forgiven, and 
one thousand remain. 

It is not only true that you must have all your sins for- 
given, but it is just as true that you must forgive all the 
sins of others who have sinned against you. What a true 
picture we have here of the ugly sin of unforgiving. How 
many people there are who are praying to God every day 
to have mercy upon them, and then if some one says some- 
thing that is not just right, or does something that is not 
just right in their sight, they will reach out and grasp their 
fellow servant by the throat and choke him, and say, "Look 
at the awful crime of this man and that." I want to say 



TWENTY-SECOND SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. TGI 

that if there is a single person on God's earth that has 
wronged yon, and yon cannot forgive that man those sins, 
you cannot any more enter heaven than the devil can. "So 
likewise shall my heavenly Father do also unto you, if ye 
from your hearts forgive not every one his brother their 
trespasses." There is no plainer law laid down in God's 
Holy Word than the law of forgiveness, and yet how many 
professed Christians there are that never speak to each 
other, that have no love for each other, that would, if they 
had the right, take that other one and put him in prison and 
keep him there. I do not think I am exaggerating the 
thing when I say I know of a preacher who would like to 
see your pastor in prison, for no reason whatever and lock 
the door on him, and keep him there until he dies! May 
God have mercy on him, and on any Christian who hasn't 
enough love in his heart to forgive any man on earth, as 
God forgives him! Can I not forgive my fellow man one 
hundred pence when my God forgave me ten thousand tal- 
ents? 

And this forgiving must go on until we die. It does not 
mean that you can go and forgive your fellow man and 
then go right to heaven. We were taught to pray, "Give us 
this day our daily bread" — that prayer clearly indicating 
that the Lord's prayer is to be prayed every day; but that 
is not the only petition in the Lord's Prayer; there is an- 
other following that which says, "Forgive us our trespasses 
as we forgive those who trespass against us." If that means 
anything, it does mean that every day of my life I shall ask 
God to forgive me the ten thousand talents, and every day 
of my life I must forgive my fellow man the one hundred 
pence. There was a time when Peter thought forgiveness 
had ceased to be a virtue; he thought seven times w T as 
sufficient; but Christ told him that seventy times seven 
was not too often, and taught him the great lesson that 
when you have forgiven four hundred and ninety times, 
you have learned the lesson so well that it becomes a pleas- 
ure. I must treat my fellow man as I ask my God to 
treat me. That is the Lord's relation to sin over against us. 

2. You cannot divide your sins, and just as little as you 
can take one sin into heaven, just so little can you keep 



762 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

one sin out of hell if you go there. It may be that I have 
some one sitting before me to-day who is not going to ac- 
cept the Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, as his only Savior ; 
there may be some one here who, if he does accept Him, will 
only accept the forgiveness of the ten thousand talents, 
and does not intend to forgive the one hundred pence. Mark 
you, if you are sitting before me to-day, I am going to tell 
you what you will find out on the Judgment Day, and that 
is, that you will go straight to hell, and take every sin 
with you, and not leave one back. You cannot divide your 
sins. 

You will take your original sin with you, for if that is 
not forgiven, you will have to take it with you, and if you 
go to hell, you cannot go there and leave unforgiven sin 
behind you ; you have got to take that stubborn nature that 
was born into the world with you ; you have got to take that 
hatred against God with you; you have got to take your 
enmity against Him with you. 

And not only your original sin, you have got to take 
every unforgiven sin with you. There are some people who 
owe ten thousand talents and never ask God to have com- 
passion on them ; never ask God for forgiveness ; they don't 
want forgiveness ; they say, "I am going to stand before God 
as I am on the Judgment Day." Robert G. Ingersoll said 
one time, "If I go to the Judgment I will just say to God, 
'If I was mistaken, I was mistaken/ I don't want a Re- 
deemer," and that is the spirit with which some people are 
going to stand before God ; they have not asked for forgive- 
ness; they do not want a Redeemer; they will stand not 
only with all their original sin, but with all their actual 
sins unforgiven, and take them all right with them; they 
cannot leave them back. You cannot divide your sins. 

There is another thought in this lesson that ought to 
make every man think as he never thought before, and that 
is that he has got to take even the sins that were forgiven, 
if unsaved at last, with him to hell, or their equivalent. 
"So when his fellow servants saw what was done, they were 
very sorry, and came and told unto their lord all that was 
done. Then his lord, after that he had called him, said unto 
him, O thou wicked servant, I forgave thee all that debt, 



TWENTY-SECOND SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. li'M 

because thou desiredst me; shouldest not thou also have 
had compassion on thy fellow servant, even as I had pity on 
thee? And his lord was wroth, and delivered him to the tor- 
mentors, till lie should pay all that was due unto him.'' 
How much? Ten thousand talents. Mark you, this man 
had been forgiven of the whole debt, and he went out and 
choked a man because he owed him an hundred pence; his 
own friends reported him to his lord; his lord calls him 
"wicked servant" and hands him over to the tormentors and 
says, "Keep on tormenting him until he has paid the whole 
debt ; he has got to pay the ten thousand talents that I for- 
gave him." Well, some one may say, If it was forgiven, how 
could he charge him up again? I do not say that he had 
to pay the original ten thousand talents; but he, by doing 
this crime, loaded on himself the ten thousand talents once 
more. In other words, he stood before the tormentors with 
every sin, in equivalence, that he had ever had forgiven, and 
that ought to make us think. No difference if I have been 
a child of God for over two score of years; no difference 
if I have been preaching the forgiveness of sins to thou- 
sand^ upon thousands; no difference if I have baptized 
thousands of immortal souls in the name of the Father, Son 
and Holy Ghost; no difference if God has forgiven me ten 
thousand times ten thousand sins, if in the future I get the 
heart of unf orgiveness ; if I fail to be true to my Master; 
if, on the Judgment Day I am lost, mark what I say, not 
only the sins that I commit from now on until death shall 
go with me, but my original, bad nature, must go along, and 
all the sins I have ever committed in the past will be reck- 
oned and will stand before me, and I will take them all right 
to hell with me, just as sure as there is a God in heaven. 
You cannot divide your sins, my friends. 

And if we cannot divide them, what must we do? There 
is only one thing to do, and that is through the mercy of 
the Lord Jesus Christ to accept the Father's forgiveness, 
and to pray daily for a forgiving spirit, and want forgive- 
ness yourselves, and for others, until you breathe yoor last 
breath, and go to heaven without a sin. May God bless these 
words to your eternal good. Amen. 



764 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 



PRAYER. 

O God, our Heavenly Father, Thou who hast with Thy great mercy for- 
given us for the ten thousand talents that we owe Thee; Thou hast given 
into our hearts that spirit that we, too, should forgive our fellow-men for the 
small debts which they owe us. O God, forbid that we should act as tyrants, 
forgiven by Thee, the Merciful One; but give us that spirit that will enable 
us in the spirit of the Lord's Prayer, ever to go forth and really desire the 
pleasure of forgiving our fellow-men. O God, is there any one in the world 
this morning, to whom I might go this afternoon and forgive him? If so, 
help me to go. And give this same spirit to every one in this house. And 
may this same spirit go out to those who, although they have heard Thy 
Word, are still going on adding transgression to transgression, and talent 
upon talent, to the great debt that they never can pay. We ask Thee that 
Thou wilt this morning give us the unction from on high of Thy Holy Spirit 
to enlighten our hearts and souls, to be true to the great message of Thy 
Word, which shall stand though the heavens fall. Give us a faith that will 
never waver nor deviate in the least from Thy message so clear and plain, 
so great and wide, a hammer that will break the very rock ; may it break our 
hearts unto true repentance. Hear this our prayer; we ask it in the name of 
Jesus, who taught us to pray: 

Our Father, who art in heaven ; Hallowed be Thy name ; Thy kingdom 
come; Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our 
daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass, 
against us. Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil : For Thine 
is the kfngdom and the power, and the glory, forever and ever. Amen. 



REFORflATION. 



JOHN'S VISION OF THE REFORMATION. 



REV. 14: 6-11. 



HND I saw another angel fly in the midst of heaven, having the ever- 
lasting Gospel to preach unto them that dwell on the earth, and to 
every nation, and kindred, and tongue, and people, saying with a 
loud voice, Fear God, and give glory to Him; for the hour of His judgment 
is come : and worship Him that made heaven, and earth, and the sea, and 
the fountains of waters. And there followed another angel, saying, Babylon 
is fallen, is fallen, that great city, because she made all nations drink of the 
wine of the wrath of her fornication. And the third angel followed them, 
saying with a loud voice, If any man worship the beast and his image, and 
receive his mark in his forehead, or in his hand, the same shall drink of 
the wine of the wrath of God, which is poured out without mixture into the 
cup of His indignation; and he shall be tormented with fire and brimstone 
in the presence of the holy angels, and in the presence of the Lamb : And the 
smoke of their torment ascendeth up forever and ever : and they have no 
rest day nor night, who worship the beast and his image, and whosoever 
receiveth the mark of his name. 

Sanctify us, O Lord, through Thy truth : 
THy Word is truth. Amen. 



Dear Sons and Daughters of the Reformation: — 

God's great mind is always full of great thoughts. The 
angels; the heavens; the sun, moon and stars; the earth; 
man: these are but sparks of God's thoughts. As the 
thoughts, so the plans. Men of great minds lay deeper plans 
than men of weaker minds. What plans the great mind of 
God must lay! What a universal time-piece that must be 
of which the earth with her icy poles, jealous oceans, crush- 
ing weights and monumental mountains, and the sun with 
his endless burning fingers, and the moon on her nightly 
journeys, and the stars in countless numbers, are but jewels ! 
And how much greater must the great mind of Qod be, that 
planned our salvation in Christ as the hour-hand of the 
clock of the universe before it was made! For four thou- 
sand years the sun gave a good morning kiss to the now lost 

765 



766 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

garden of Eden, before it kissed the Son of man; but the 
Son of God, and the sun in the heavens, and the Pente- 
costal fires, did not prevent the Dark Ages; but the ages 
were never so dark, even from the close of the fifth to the 
close of the eleventh century, that God did not ask the ques- 
tion: "Is not My Word like as a fire? Is not My Word 
like the hammer which breaks the rock in pieces?" Jer. 
23 :29. "The Word of God," says Paul, "is not bound." It 
never was bound. It lay smouldering under the ashes of 
centuries, but it burned then as now. In lonely cloisters 
it was laboriously copied; it took years to finish single 
copies, which now make famous the cities possessing them. 
It was the regret of all who knew God's Word then, that all 
might not know it. It was not necessary then to lay an inter- 
dict on the reading of God's Word ; it was too expensive for 
man to possess. Yet it was known in communities outside 
of the Church of Rome. The fire and hammer of God's Word 
had kindled and broken the hearts of the Albigensian and 
Waldensian martyrs before their funeral pyres were kindled. 

"Those slaughtered saints whose bones 
Lie scattered on the Alpine mountains cold; 
Even those who kept God's Truth so pure of old, 
When all our fathers worshipped stocks and stones." 

The Word of God is not bound. Sail out, Christopher 
Columbus, and discover God's hidden America for the op- 
pressed! Come into this world, chosen Reformer, Martin 
Luther! Take those rags and make paper of them; throw 
down those pens and make type for the printing press. Re- 
joice, ye nations, the first Book printed is the Bible, God's 
holy Word. Take it down to the library at Erfurt and 
chain it to the shelf, and do not let visitors see it. Who is 
that eighteen year old student coming into the library hun- 
gry for truth? It is Martin Luther, who knew the Gosepls 
and the Epistles for every Sunday in the year. Watch him 
run his finger along every shelf until he comes to "Biblia 
Sacra." It is chained. He wonders why. He knows that 
Book by heart, and would not look at it were it not for 
that chain. He thinks it contains nothing but the Gospels 
and Epistles contained in the Church service. The Book 



JOHN'S VISION OF THE REFORMATION. 7(>7 

opens. First Samuel and the first chapter. The story of 
Hannah consecrating her son to the Lord. What book is this? 
"Biblia Sacra.'' What! is this all God's Word? He reads. 
He admires. He forgets himself. It is night and he sighs 
as he rises : "Oh, that this Book of books might one day be 
mine." The flame of the Reformation was kindled, and 
three hundred and eighty-seven years ago to-morrow, God be- 
gan to fulfill what He showed John on the Isle of Patmos 
nearly two thousand years ago. I now call your prayerful 
attention to 

JOHN'S VISION OF THE REFORMATION. 

To-morrow it will be three hundred and eighty-seven 
years since immense crowds were pouring into an ancient 
city of Germany, bearing in its name "Wittenberg," the 
memorial of its founder, Wittekind the Younger. What 
should draw the masses? Certainly not the weather-beaten 
dingy little building. Strange as it may seem, it was an 
old church — the "Church of all Saints" — to which the 
masses were flocking from every direction. It was a wonder- 
ful church inside. Just think of it: There were nineteen 
thousand relics to be seen, among which a fragment of Noah's 
ark ; some soot from the furnace in which the three Hebrews 
stood ; a piece of the Savior's crib, and some hair from Saint 
Christopher's beard, were found. But this was not the 
greatest delusion. The Pope in Rome had granted indul- 
gences to all who would visit that Church on the first of 
November. In the language of Krauth : "Against the doors 
of that church of dubious saints, and dubious relics, and 
dubious indulgences, was found fastened on that memorable 
morning a scroll unrolled. The writing on it was firm ; 
the nails which held it were well driven in ; the sentiments 
it conveyed were moderate yet very decided; the material 
— parchment — was the same which long ago had held 
words of redemption above the head of the Redeemer; the 
contents were an amplification of the old theme of glory — 
Christ on the cross the only King. The Magna Charta which 
had been buried beneath the Pope's throne, reappeared on 
the Church door. The key-note of the Reformation was 
struck full and clear at the beginning: 'Salvation through 



768 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

Christ alone*' " This was the beginning of one of the greatest 
events by one one of the greatest men since the apostolic 
times. A great scene in the great drama, planned by the 
great mind of God, was now to be enacted by three angels, 
seen by John the Evangelist from the Isle of Patmos. No 
man will understand the Eeformation without keeping in 
mind that God and His angels did the work through Dr. 
Luther. In these words of our text this morning we have 
John's vision of the Eeformation carried out by three holy 
angels. Some one will say, Was that angel Dr. Luther? No. 
Dr. Luther was a man, a sinner saved by grace, just the 
same as any other man. Let us not forget this morning that 
when God does great things He makes use of His holy 
angels. When He created the world it is said that the morn- 
ing stars sang together. The angels were there. This morn- 
ing in the Sunday-school lesson we found that when Elisha 
and his servant were surrounded by the Syrian army, the 
prayer of Elisha to God was to open the eyes of his servant 
that he might see; and lo, there were chariots of fire — holy 
angels, more in number than the enemy. You remember that 
when the angel flew over the valley of Sennacherib, one hun- 
dred and eight-five thousand fell on that battle field ; you will 
remember that when an angel flew over Egypt, the first born 
the next morning were dead; you will remember that when 
John the Baptist and Christ were to be born, an angel came 
and announced their coming ; you will remember that when 
Christ was born there was a song, and that song was deliv- 
ered by the heavenly host : "Glory to God in the highest, and 
on earth peace, good will toward men!" You will remember 
that the angel of God was down in Gethsemane when Christ 
was sweating drops of blood, and strengthened Him; you 
will remember that when the stone was rolled away, the 
angel was there and sat upon that rock ; you will remember 
that when Christ arose the angels of God were with Him, 
and will be with Him when He conies again to judge the 
quick and the dead; you will remember that when the 
apostles of old were in prison, the angel of God shook the 
prison until Peter was delivered. Do not think for a single 
moment that this great Reformation of the sixteenth cen- 
tury would take place without the angels of God. There were 



JOHN'S VISION OF THE REFORMATION. 7(> ( .) 

three angels, according to the text this morning; each one 
had a special message, and it is to these messages that I 
now direct your attention: 

I. The message of the first angel: "And I saw another 
angel fly in the midst of heaven, having the everlasting Gos- 
pel to preach unto them that dwell on the earth, and to 
every nation, and kindred, and tongue, and people, saying 
with a loud voice, Fear God and give glory to Him ; for the 
hour of His judgment is come : and worship Him that made 
heaven, and earth, and the sea, and the fountains of waters.'' 
It was necessary in that day that the true worship of God 
should be restored, but I will show you later on this morn- 
ing what the worship of that day was. The real truth is that 
the people had lost their Savior; they had lost the Bible; 
they had lost true worship ; they were living amid the fruits 
of the Dark Ages, and had found another taking the place of 
Jesus Christ. Oh, before those Dark Ages, the messenger 
of God tells John, there is one coming who shall proclaim 
the everlasting Gospel again. What is the Gospel? I never 
could find a better definition than I found in Luther's cate- 
chism: "The Gospel is the glad tidings that Jesus Christ 
has come into the world to save sinners, and through faith 
to make them forever blessed." What is the Gospel? The 
Gospel is the good news that you and I, condemned by the 
holy law, have a Mediator between God and man, — Jesus 
Christ, on Calvary, dying for our sins, paying the debt, ask- 
ing us to come to Him and accept Him as our Savior, putting 
on us the cloak of His righteousness, if we believe in Him — 
that is the Gospel; and that is the Gospel, says the first 
angel, that shall be proclaimed again after the Dark Ages, 
when people had forgotten to fear God, and feared the Pope 
more than their Maker. It is not often that I say anything 
about other churches, but it is simply impossible to preach 
a Reformation sermon without referring to the Romish 
Church; and the Romish Church itself is saying things to- 
day that only substantiate every word that I shall declare 
this morning. 

How was this Gospel to be preached? According to this 
first angel, it was to be preached to the living ; to those that 
are on the earth, everywhere; in all lands; in all tongues, 

49 



770 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

and to large congregations. "Having the everlasting Gos- 
pel to preach unto them that dwell on the earth." 

1. During the Middle Ages the Pope took upon himself 
the authority to introduce purgatory. St. Peter's Church 
was to be built; there was no money in the treasury, and 
the Pope made up his mind that the way to do is to make 
the people believe that they can get their own lost and 
damned out of purgatory if they will pay for it, and the 
result was that messengers were sent all over Europe to 
proclaim forgiveness of sins for money, and buying the pray- 
ers of the priests and the Pope to get those out of purgatory 
that were there. The money came into the coffers, and the 
great St. Peter's was built, but there was an error taught 
there, and there are people still holding to that error, and 
that is that people may be saved after they have passed out 
of this life into the life beyond. The angel of God knew 
better. The angel of God knew very well that if man is to 
be saved at all, he must be saved somewhere between the 
hour of birth and the hour of death ; consequently this angel 
flew through the midst of heaven saying that the time is 
coming when there shall one arise who shall proclaim an 
everlasting Gospel, free salvation to the people, — not in the 
grave, not under the earth, not down in the sea — but to 
the people that are living on God's earth. 

2. Not only was the Gospel to be preached to the living 
people, but it was also to be preached everywhere. ". 
having the everlasting Gospel to preach to them that dwell 
on the earth" — not only down at Borne. Little did Eome 
care in that day whether other parts of the world had the 
truth or not. The missionary spirit was dead, A few 
people still knew of Rome and went down there year after 
year with their flagellations, but the great masses of people 
on all sides of the globe did not know of Christ. God Him- 
self had preserved on the other side of the ocean a land called 
America, It was God's plan that this land should be dis- 
covered just at the right time, just at the time that the 
people who shall be oppressed on account of Rome, shall find 
here a refuge. There was a plan in God's mind that there 
shall be a shore on the other side for the Mayflower, wmere 



JOHN'S VISION OF THE REFORMATION. 771 

the public schools shall be established and where the people 
may have freedom, in the great land of liberty — America. 
And so that great Divine Mind was planning things, and the 
time would come when this Gospel that shall be discovered 
again and brought to light by Dr. Luther shall become the 
missionary message all over the world. Long before the 
Dark Ages Jesus had said, "Go ye into all the world, and 
preach the Gospel to every creature. He that believeth and 
is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall 
be damned.-' But they had forgotten that message during 
these Dark Ages. The world was lying in darkness; the 
Church was asleep; only a few people down in hovels and 
convents still knew something about the old Truth. "Now," 
says God, "it is time to give the world this Gospel again; 
it is time to spread this Gospel from shore to shore," and 
you will remember it only took a very short time during 
the Reformation until this Gospel went throughout Ger- 
many, and France, and Spain, up into Holland, and Eng- 
land, and came across the waters to our own land, to all the 
earth. 

3. Not only was this Gospel to be preached to all people, 
but also to all ages, to every nation and kindred. In those 
days a few people thought if they had the truth that was 
enough. Little did they care whether children had schools 
or not; little did they care whether the people could read 
or write or not ; little did they care whether the Bible was 
in the hands of the people or not, except that they would 
i)urn the people that read the Bible. Do you realize, my 
Ifriends, that it is only three hundred and eighty-seven years 
ago that there was not a public school in the world? Do 
you realize it is only three hundred and eighty-seven years 
ago that priests could not read the Bible and did not know 
the Apostles' Creed any more? Do you realize that that 
little catechism which Dr. Luther wrote was penned for the 
very purpose that Christian schools might be established, 
and that that little catechism brought forth the public school 
system in the world? I tell you this first angel had a mes- 
sage to deliver that meant something. It meant that little 
children should hear the Gospel; it meant that mothers 



7 iZ THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

should have the Bible; it meant that boys and girls should 
have the Word of God ; it meant that it should be a Gospel 
for all ages. 

4. "Preach unto them that dwell on the earth, and to 
every nation, and kindred, and tongue." In those days the 
Bible was either Hebrew, or Latin, or Greek, and the people 
did not understand it. The Lord God never intended that 
His Word should be closed up in languages that could not be 
understood; it was His intention that this Bible should be 
translated. I know very well that Spain gave to the world 
a polyglot Bible in the same year that Luther nailed the 
theses to the door of Wittenberg castle church, but the world 
has never read that polyglot Bible ; it was a miserable affair. 
I know very well there were thirteen or fourteen German 
translations of the Bible given to the world before Luther's, 
but they were such miserable translations that the world 
never saw the books. It remained for Dr. Luther to be put 
into the Wartburg as a prisoner on account of his faith, 
to translate the Bible into the language of the common 
people, and by that translation he not only gave the Bible to 
the world, but he gave the best translation that the world 
has ever found. I do not care what minister of the Gospel 
you ask, if he is a reader of the German Bible and the Eng- 
lish also, he will tell you that the English Bible may be more 
literal, but that Dr. Luther's translation has given the best 
meaning of the original text ever given. And there 
never has been a very important translation made into 
any of the four hundred languages of the Bible to-day, with- 
out laying down by the side of the translator Dr. Martin 
Luther's old German Bible, and whenever they come to a 
verse that they do not get the right sense of, they say, "Dr. 
Luther, what does it mean?" No one who is acquainted 
with history, and the translation of the great Bible, can 
ignore the fact that the angel announced to the world the 
miner's son, versed in law, versed in theology, converted 
after a fearful struggle, finding the truth after mighty 
prayers; that this man gave to the world the Bible in a 
language that shall stand ; and what has surprised me more 
than any one thing is this, when it is a fact that the Lu- 
theran Church was born in the sixteenth century, in a Ian- 



JOHNS VISION OF THE REFORMATION. 773 

guage that was not then the popular language, why is it that 
so many of our German Lutheran congregations are not 
willing to have English preaching? I have wondered time 
and again how parents could put their language above the 
Church of Christ. In my travels through twenty-nine States 
of the Union, I have found Episcopal churches, and Metho- 
dist churches, and Presbyterian churches with their very 
best members having come out of the old German Lutheran 
Church, and when I went to those men and said, Why did 
you leave your church? the answer invariably was, because 
they would not give us the Gospel in English, and we cannot 
talk German as well as our forefathers did. May the day 
be past when any church on earth will put the Gospel of 
Jesus Christ below language. I am glad to announce that 
in our own United States the Gospel is being preached to- 
day by the Lutheran Church alone, in seventeen languages. 
When the day of Pentecost came, the apostles spoke in the 
languages of all nations in Jerusalem, and I hope the day 
will come when the grand old Church of the Reformation 
will proclaim the Gospel in all the languages of the world. 
5. Not only was this Church of the Reformation to pro- 
claim the Gospel in many tongues, but to large congrega- 
tions. " . . and to every nation, and kindred, and tongue 
and people." In the days before Dr. Luther usually a man 
preached a sermon to a few students, or a few professors. 
The masses knew nothing about the Gospel. "Now," says 
the angel of heaven, "that will never do ; the time must come 
when this Gospel must be preached in its purity to large 
multitudes; to the people." You who are professed Chris- 
tians this morning, and genuine Christians, will realize that 
there is a blessing in the Christian congregation that you 
cannot get at home. Just as little as you can make a fire 
with one chip, just so little can you keep the flame of God'ig 
love in your hearts if you are going to dwell alone in the 
world. Put the chips together and apply the match to them, 
and you have a fire ; bring the men, women and children and 
the multitudes together, and there is a flame of love and 
Gospel going through us and in us that we cannot find else- 
where. Now the angel from heaven said, this great Church 
of the Reformation must kindle a flame, and it did kindle the 



774 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

flame. Dr. Luther on his journeys often stood on the balcony 
of some hotel and preached to twenty and thirty thousand 
people, with tears rolling from his eyes, and from the eyes 
of the multitude. The people rejected their idolatry and 
began to worship the true and living God again ; they threw 
down their false religions and established churches of the 
pure Gospel. I am right here this morning to say that the 
Lutheran Church must demand large audiences and she will 
have them, if she does not follow in the path of many 
churches that are afraid to proclaim the truth. Why would 
twenty or thirty thousand people follow Luther, when not 
twenty or thirty people were following other men intellectu- 
ally just as great? Because Luther dared to stand alone; 
because he dared to say what God wanted him to say; be- 
cause he dared to stand before Europe and the king and say, 
"Here I stand; I cannot do otherwise. God help me!" 
Luther, like Elijah of old, understood that one with God is 
a majority. Dr. Luther understood that he need not be 
afraid of Pope nor priest, of no man on earth; that, as a 
messenger of God, he must proclaim the truth. And do you 
not know that the people are hungry for the truth? Do you 
not know that the old Gospel as confessed in the Lutheran 
Church is a power that is bound to grow? The day that I 
was ordained in this church, as I heard last night, one of the 
ministers said : "It is a new broom, and in a short time the 
church will be empty." Is it empty? Look around you. Is 
it empty? Will it be emtpy? Yes, it will be empty as soon 
as your pastor becomes a coward; it will be empty as soon 
as he ceases to give you God's whole truth. Whenever my 
church is empty it is nobody's fault but my own; and I am 
here this morning to say that if all the ministers of the Gos- 
pel in Mansfield and elsewhere would come out and say 
everything that God wants them to say, the churches would 
be crowded to the doors. The only reason there are a few 
vacant chairs in this house this morning is because your 
pastor needs just a little more boldness. May God help me 
to become bold as a proclaimer of the everlasting Gospel. 

II. In John's vision of the Keformation we have a second 
angel. "And there followed another angel, saying, Babylon 
is fallen, is fallen, that great city, because she made all na- 



JOHN'S VISION OF THE REFORMATION. 775 

tioiis drink of the wine of the wrath of her fornication." 
Babylon was a great city, as yon all know. Babylon had a 
wall that was 156 miles long, and 65 feet high and 120 feet 
wide, and on that wall stood two hundred magnificent towers. 
That city of Babylon was the most noted city in all the 
Orient, and yet, my friends, Babylon of old was no more 
existing when this angel flew through the heavens; that 
angel could not have referred at all to the Babylon of old; 
but let us not forget that there is a spiritual Babylon called 
Rome; and let us not forget that the city of Rome was also 
great, and the message of the second angel is this: "Rome 
is great, but the Word of God is greater." 

1. "Babylon is fallen, is fallen, that great city, because 
she made all nations drink of the wine of the wrath of her 
fornication." Am I sure now that this Babylon was Rome? 
Let me read you a few verses from the Bible : Rev. 13 : "And 
I stood upon the sand of the sea, and saw a beast rise up 
out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns, and upon 
his horns ten crowns, and upon his heads the name of blas- 
phemy. And the beast which I saw was like unto a leopard, 
and his feet were as the feet of a bear, and his mouth as the 
mouth of a lion: and the dragon gave him his power, and 
his seat, and great authority. And I saw one of his heads 
as it were wounded to death; and his deadly wound was 
healed: and all the world wondered after the beast. And 
they worshiped the dragon which gave power unto the beast ; 
and they worshiped the beast, saying, Who is like unto the 
beast? Who is able to make war with him? And there was 
given unto him a mouth speaking great things, and blas- 
phemies; and power was given unto him to continue forty 
and two months. And he opened his mouth in blasphemy 
against God, to blaspheme His name, and His tabernacle, 
and them that dAvell in heaven.'- Surely there is the illustra- 
tion of a wonderful power. Where was that power located? 
It is said here "I saw a beast rise up out of the sea, having 
seven heads and ten horns, and upon his horns ten crowns, 
and upon his heads the name of blasphemy." What were 
those seven heads? The Bible is a wonderful book, and it 
always explains itself if you know just where to look for 
the explanation. Rev. 17:9. "And here is the mind which 



776 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

hath wisdom. The seven heads are seven mountains, on 
which the woman sitteth." There we learn what the seven 
heads were. Every child here knows who the woman is. 
Jesus Christ is the Bridegroom, and the Church is His bride, 
and this bride — the woman — was sitting on the seven hills. 
And which city of the world sits on seven hills? There is 
only one, and that is Home. And it is the great Pope that 
uttered words of blasphemy. What are those words of blas- 
phemy? We are not guessing at things this morning; we 
are giving yom history. If you were to go to Rome this morn- 
ing and had the privilege of meeting the Pope wearing the 
pontifical crown, and could see the words that have been 
there for centuries and will stay there as long as the world 
stands; they are not written in Greek, nor Hebrew, nor 
English, nor German; but in a language that never will 
change, written in the Latin language, and that is the only 
language we use in this country, to count. On that pontifical 
crown you will find the words which I have put on this black- 
board : "Vicarius Filii Dei. 77 In a congregation of this size 
we certainly have Latin scholars, and in order that no one 
may think I am giving a wrong translation, I will ask some 
one to tell me what those words mean. Dr. Davis, as you 
have studied Latin, will you tell us? 

Dr. Davis : — "The vicar of the Son of God." 
We have here then the words : "He is the vicar of the Son 
of God." If that is not blasphemy, for a man to claim that 
he is the vicar of the Son of God, I do not know what blas- 
phemy is. That name stands on that crown, and if we count 
the number of that name we will soon find out what it is. 
I think I gave this in this church once before, but I give 
it again in order that our stenographers may take it, and 
give it to the world. You understand that we were taught to 
count in the schools : One I, one ; two IPs two ; three Ill's, 
three, etc. Taking the same principle, we count : 

V-= 5 
1= 1 

C = 100 

A-= 
R= 



JOHN'S VISION OF THE REFORMATION. 777 

U or 



1 = 


1 


v = 


5. 


s== 





F== 





1 = 


1 


L = 


50 


1 = 


1 


1 = 


1 


D = 


500 


E = 





1 = 


1 



GG6 

Add them up and you have the number, 666. The Lord did 
not put a single verse in the Bible not to be understood by 
man. So we find these words : "Here is wisdom. Let 
him that hath understanding count the number of the beast ; 
for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hun- 
dred three score and six." Rev. 13 :18. In other words, we 
find this great truth proclaimed by the second angel, that 
Babylon on the seven hills is a mighty power; has there 
one who calls himself the vicar of the Son of God, while 
the Bible teaches plainly that there is one Mediator between 
God and man, the man Christ Jesus; and when any man 
on earth tries to take the place of Jesus Christ, he becomes 
guilty of blasphemy. Let me read a few of these words 
again: "And there was given unto him a mouth speaking 
great things and blasphemies; and power was given unto 
him to continue forty and two months. And he opened his 
mouth in blasphemy against God, to blaspheme His name, 
and His tabernacle, and them that dwell in heaven." 

2. This second angel not only proclaimed the greatness 
of the Babylon on the seven hills of Rome, but proclaimed 
the great fact that Babylon must fall. "Babylon is fallen, 
is fallen, that great city, because she made all nations drink 
of the wine of the wrath of her fornication." When a man 
lives a dual life, we say he is guilty of fornication; and 
when the Church of God goes away from the true and living 
God, to a false worship, she commits spiritual fornication. 



778 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

Eome was great on that clay when Luther nailed his theses to 
the door of Wittenberg castle church, for in those days the 
Pope not only ruled the Church, but he ruled the govern- 
ments of the world. They all fell down at his feet. Now stop 
and think of a poor miner's boy, with nothing in his hands 
but the Sword of the Spirit, shaking the seven hills of Home 
and wounding that Pope. Did he do it? Listen: "And I 
saio one of his heads as it toere tvounded to death; and his 
deadly wound was healed : and all the world wondered after 
the beast." And do you want to know how he wounded that 
beast? Listen: ". . that they should make an image to 
the beast which had the wound by a sword, and did live." 
In other words, Dr. Luther found that the Sword of the 
Spirit in his hand was more powerful than the Pope at 
Eome. The Church on the hills of Eome had taken away 
from the people their Savior. Luther proclaimed Christ to 
the world again. The Pope at Eome had said, If you want 
forgiveness of sins you have got to pay for it.. Luther held 
up his Sword and said, "You can get forgiveness of sins 
alone through the mercy of the Lord Jesus Christ;'"' and 
cut into his head. The Pope said, "You shall worship Mary, 
and the saints, and fall down before them." Luther held up 
his Sword and said: "Thou shalt worship the Lord Thy 
God, and Him only shalt Thou serve." The Pope said, "Take 
the cup away from the communicant." Luther said, Here 
is the cup. Jesus said: "Take eat, this is My body" and 
"Take drink, this is My blood." The Pope said, There are 
seven sacraments. Luther read through his "Biblia Sacra" 
and found only two. The Pope said, I am the highest au- 
thority; and Jesus, through Luther said: "I am the Way, 
the Truth, and the Life, no man cometh to the Father but by 
Me." And thus, one by one, he took up the errors of Eome 
and struck them with the mighty Truth of God's Word. 
Then all Germany was aflame, and all France, and Spain, 
and Holland, and England, and that flame came across the 
seas to America in the Mayflower, and with the followers 
of Luther himself, until to-day we have in all the world 
living seventy million Lutherans, to say nothing of the other 
Protestants who are living and enjoying the liberty which 
that man of God, by the help of his Master and the holy 



JOHN'S VISION OF THE REFORMATION. 779 

angels, brought into existence three hundred and eighty- 
seven years ago. 

So Home fell, but remember, she did not die. "And I 
saw one of his heads as it were wounded to death; and his 
deadly wound teas healed." Rome did not die. She still 
exists, but she has lost her power. It was not very long 
after this Reformation that the people drove one of the 
Popes right out of the city of Rome; he has lost his tem- 
poral power and he is no more what he was before, but now 
without his former power, he still exists. 

III. The third angel comes and proclaims a vision of the 
future after the Reformation announced by the first and 
second. "And the third angel followed them, saying, with 
a loud voice, If any man worship the beast and his image, 
and receive his mark in his forehead, or in his hand, the same 
shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is poured 
out without mixture into the cup of His indignation; and 
he shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the pres- 
ence of the holy angels, and in the presence of the Lamb. 
And the smoke of their torment ascendeth up forever and 
ever: and they have no rest day or night, who worship 
the beast and his image, and whosoever receiveth the mark 
of his name." 

Dear Christian friends, this third angel has proclaimed 
what would take place to-day, and from now on to the end 
of the world : and the sum and substance of this message 
is twofold: False religions are not yet ended; and wor- 
shipers may be damned as well as heathen. Oh, it is a very 
solemn message, my friends. Weigh it carefully. I am bound 
to speak of a few matters this morning that some of you 
would rather have me keep silent on, but I am going to be 
true to my God, if the heavens fall. 

1. There are two false religions proclaimed in those 
last three verses that are going to be known, by a mark in 
the forehead; and by a mark in the hand. We can not say 
that we will pay no attention to this chapter. When there 
is a chapter in the Bible you do not want to hear, you do 
not want to hear God's Word any more; and the person 
who does not want to hear God's Word preached any more, 
is worse than an infidel. This religion, false as it may be, 



780 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

is always known by its beastly character. Whenever you 
get away from the true religion, you get into the religion 
of the beast. Whenever you get away from the true and liv- 
ing God, you get to be more beastly than before. We are 
told that in the latter times shall be beastly religions, known 
by the mark in the head and in the hand. What religion 
is known by the mark in the head? I am told that old 
wounded Koine makes her mark in her forehead every time 
she goes to the house of God. You have possibly seen the 
good Boinan Catholic make the cross, sometimes on his 
breast, usually in his forehead. Whether this means Borne 
in her wounded and healed state or not, I am not quite sure ; 
if I were I would say so ; but this much I do know, that we 
are living now in an age of rationalism ; we are living in an 
age when men think they are just a little too smart to be 
Christians; we are living in an age when people think be- 
cause they went to school a few years, and possibly to some 
academy a little while, they know more than the preachers. 
There is a certain lawyer in this town who has always posed, 
ever since I have been here, as a "smartie." I made up my 
mind that he must have gone to school at Ada, and it was 
not long ago I talked with him and I said, "Where did you 
go to school?'' He said, "Ada." Not that I am casting any 
reflection on Ada. Ada has given some very good students 
to the world, but Ada has given more boys to the world that 
have gone six weeks and knew it all, than any school I ever 
heard of. So we have a class of people that have gone to 
school just a little while, thinking they know it all, and say- 
ing, "What do I care for the old Bible? What do I care for 
the old Church? What do I care for the Sunday-school? I 
am beyond all that. I am one of America's bright young 
ones." And there you have the young man that has the 
mark in his head and is going to be a beast before long; 
there you have the young man who is not ashamed, if found 
drunk some night and carried home; there you have the 
man who is not ashamed to stand around in the saloon and 
then go home beastly drunk ; there you have the man who is 
not ashamed to eat like swine; there you have the man going 
out into the world and doing all the meanness he is capable 
of; there you have the man who is not safe in your homes, 



JOHNS VISION OF THE REFORMATION. 781 

in whose presence yon would not want to have your daugh- 
ter. We have a great deal of that beastly religion in the 
present day, and I say the world is going wrong, and the 
angel of God — the third angel — told us what was coming. 

Now that is right, whether I speak of the sign in the 
forehead, the cross, or whether it is the other. Everybody 
knows that the Roniish Church has paid little attention to 
sanctification ; everybody knows that when the average Ro- 
nian Catholic goes to church in the morning, he does not 
care very much how he spends Sunday afternoon ; everybody 
knoAvs that where the Romish Church has total sway, the 
people cannot read or write; everybody knows that the 
Eomish Church thrives best on ignorance; everybody who 
is well informed knows that the country having the most 
people reading and writing, is Norway and Sweden, the Lu- 
theran country. And so I say I am not wrong, no difference 
which one of those interpretations you accept, the heady 
religion, the beastly religion, known by the sign in the fore- 
head, instead of a religion by regeneration and sanctifica- 
tion, is the beastly religion that we are going to have after 
the Reformation until the end of the world. 

2. Another great false religion is to be known by the 
right hand. That is the subject some of you do not want 
me to talk about. Why did you not tell the Holy Spirit to 
keep it out of the Bible, and then I would keep quiet. In 
the text of to-day it does not say whether it is the right hand 
or the left hand, but the Word of God is always plain; if 
you come over to the thirteenth chapter you will find just 
which hand it is : "And he had power to give life unto the 
image of the beast, that the image of the beast should both 
speak, and cause that as many as would not worship the im- 
age of the beast should be killed. And he causeth all, both 
small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a 
mark — " — in the foot? No, sir. In the forehead? Yes. In 
the left hand? No. " — in their right hand, or in their fore- 
head." Now you can go around in this world and pick up a 
man's right hand, and you cannot see the mark, and yet it is 
there. When I was a boy, when we met we shook hands, 
and everybody shook hands alike; but now when I shake 
hands, about nine men out of ten take a finger and crawl; 



782 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

around over my knuckles and it fells like a snake. What is 
the trouble? Why, I am sure it does not make any difference 
where you put your finger, but that finger means something. 
It means that you know each other by the grip you give each 
other with the right hand; the Mason knows the Mason; 
the Odd Fellow knows the Odd Fellow ; the K. of P. knows 
the K. of P. It goes on in this way, that just because father 
and mother have that mark, the boys and girls want the 
mark. It goes on further, because a man who has enough 
money to spend to be a Mason, has the mark, the man who 
butchers wants a mark; so the butchers go together and 
they have a mark. Then the man who handles the razor 
wants a mark, and we have the Barbers' Union; then the 
man who handles the plane wants the mark, and we have 
the Carpenters' Union; this union and that, and every man 
knows the other by the mark in the right hand. What do 
these people do who do mark themselves with the right hand? 
I am not holding up before you this morning this order or 
that order; little do I care about your secrets; that is not 
the thing; but I am holding up to you this morning an 
institution as old as the garden of Eden; it was started 
down in that little hole where Adam and Eve were hiding 
when God said, "Where art thou, Adam?" and it has been 
going on down through history until the present day; and 
this institution has bred other institutions that have known 
each other by the mark, and they have come together and 
determined that if others have not the same mark, they 
must be killed. Is this guess-work? Did this angel know 
anything, or not? Haven't men been killed up here in 
Chicago because they haven't had the mark in the right 
hand? I am not referring to our own school house, but to 
the high school at North Broadway in North Columbus. The 
foundation was laid, I am told, by men who have not got the 
mark in the right hand; the walls were built, and w T hen it 
came to the roof there wasn't a slater in Columbus that 
didn't have the mark in the right hand and there wasn't one 
of them who would put that roof on, but they, all said, "We 
will never do it, because the foundation was laid by men 
that have not got the mark in the right hand." Suppose I 
were a slater, and some morning I should go down to that 



JOHNS VISION OF THE REFORMATION. 783 

high school and begin to put on the roof, what would the 
other men do? They would do just what they did in New 
York, in Colorado, in Chicago, — they would knock S. P. Long 
off of there with a stone. Why? Because he is not a man? 
That does not make any difference; man or no man, lie 
hasn't got the mark. Brethren, the man that will stand up 
for that thing is not a child of God, I do not care who he is. 
That is the truth that was proclaimed by the third angel 
of the Reformation. This third angel said, nearly two 
thousand years ago, that false religions, known by the mark 
in the forehead and in the right hand, would not only inter- 
fere with buying and selling, but bring about persecution 
and murder. Rev. 13 :15-17. The great war of the future 
will be between the devil's church and God's Church, and I 
tremble for the preachers and professed Christians who to- 
day are helping along the army of the devil. God have mercy 
on them the day "The same shall drink of the wine of the 
wrath of God, which is poured out without mixture into the 
cup of His indignation; and he shall be tormented with 
fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels, and in 
the presence of the Lamb; and the smoke of their torment 
ascendeth up forever and ever, and they have no rest day 
nor night, who worship the beast and his image, and who- 
soever receiveth the mark of his name." 

I say these things with love, my friends, but I fear that 
some professed Christians, even ministers of the Gospel, are, 
like that servant of Elisha of old, saying, "Look at the 
enemy!" My prayer this morning is, O God, open their 
eyes to see that they which are with us are more than they 
which are with them. Dr. Luther in those days had to flee 
to the Wartburg to escape the enemy; they sought his life. 
In the estimation of the world at that time there was not 
a bigger fool in the year 1517 than Dr. Luther. To-day the 
world admires him. To-day every Church on earth must say 
that he was the greatest man from the days of the apostles 
to the present time. What do I care what anybody thinks 
of me, just so God says, You are carrying out the message! 
And so I say this morning, dear friends, open your eyes and 
look at the angels; they are hovering around us, watching 
over us. God's truth is so great we are always safe, if we 



784 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

are on the right side. Oh, I will not ask God to strike you 
blind because I know you are children of God, and I know 
you want the truth, and I know you will abide by the truth. 
If this congregation did not love the truth it would have 
driven me away long ago. I believe you are going to abide 
by the truth, and you are glad this morning that I am telling 
what I find, and all I ask of you is, not to follow me — I do 
not ask you to do anything to please any man; but I ask 
you to settle these questions on your knees in prayer. I ask 
you to keep your eyes open and see the great truth in all 
things that God has revealed in His mighty Word. We are 
living now in the closing age of the great message of the 
third angel. May we all so live that when all the angels 
come, with the Son of God, in glory, we may be found on the 
side of the righteous. Amen. 

PRAYER. 

O God, our heavenly Father, we thank Thee for the great Reformation. 
We thank Thee that Thou hast seen fit to take an humble sinner like Dr. 
Luther and through him give the Church of God that standing in this world 
that it has to-day. We thank Thee that Thou hast seen fit through him 
not only to set the conscience of the people free, but that Thou hast estab- 
lished the Church of God, and the schools which to-day are such a won- 
derful blessing to the world. ' We ask Thee to bless the Christian schools. 
We ask Thy special blessing upon the public schools of our country, and may 
they, legitimately born from the Bible, never forget that grand old Book. 
God forbid that that child should ever forget its mother. We pray Thee 
that Thou wilt bless all the superintendents, and all the principals, and all 
the teachers of our country, and we pray Thee to give them that great love 
for the truth of God, that they may stand as .Thy children always should 
stand, for truth. We pray Thee to give Thy special blessing upon all who 
have assembled in this house. Bless each father and mother who shall hear 
God's Word only a few Sundays more. Bless the sick who would love to 
be with us and cannot. Bless the dear little children, and help them to 
see that the soul must be fed as well as the body. Heavenly Father, listen, 
to all the prayers which Thou wouldst love to hear from us, in substance in 
Thine own prayer : 

Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name. Thy kingdom 
come. Thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven. Give us this day our 
daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass 
against us. Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil : For Thine 
is the kingdom and the power, and the glory, forever and ever. Amen. 



TWENTY=TH1RD SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY 



YOUNG AMERICA. 



Matt. 22: 15-22. 



f^/y^HEN went the Pharisees, and took counsel how they might entangle 
Him in His talk. And they sent out unto Him their disciples with 
the Herodians, saying, Master, we know that Thou art true, and 
teachest the way of God in truth, neither carest Thou for any man; for Thou 
regardest not the person of men. Tell us therefore, What thinkest Thou? 
Is it lawful to give tribute unto Caesar, or not? But Jesus perceived their 
wickedness, and said, Why tempt ye Me, ye hypocrites? Shew Me the 
tribute money. And they brought unto Him a penny. And He saith unto 
them, Whose is this image and superscription? They say unto Him, Caesar's. 
Then saith He unto them, Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are 
Caesar's; and unto God the things that are God's. When they had heard 
these words, they marvelled, and left Him, and went their way. 

Sanctify us, O Lord, through Thy truth: 
Thy Word is truth. Amen. 



Dear Christian Friends: — 

Suppose in about fourteen hundred years from now the 
airship should be so perfect that a man could sail directly to 
the moon ; and suppose on his arrival there he should find a 
class of people as much different from ours as the Indian 
was from the European ; suppose, after many wars of exter- 
mination, five hundred years more should roll by and a race 
should be found on that moon so different from any 
other race on the face of the globe as the American people 
differ from any other people on the face of the globe; 
suppose, then, in that assembly of people who live on the 
moon a book should be read in the presence of as many peo- 
ple as I am speaking to this morning, and it should be an- 
nounced that that book was written fourteen hundred years 
50 785 



786 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

before the moon with its inhabitants was discovered by that 
great discoverer; suppose, furthermore, it should be discov- 
ered in that book that the best description of the people who 
lived on that moon was given that was ever written, what 
would be your impression of that book? Would it not be 
wonderful? Would not every one say it has upon it the 
stamp of Divinity? For how should we to-day be able to 
give a true description of the people that shall be found on a 
globe not even known yet to be inhabited, in the year thirty- 
three hundred, or after that, possibly thirty-eight hundred? 
Such a Book I read to you this morning. Fourteen hundred 
years and more before Columbus discovered America, and 
five hundred years after the discovery, we find here in the 
lesson of our text one of the most beautiful descriptions that 
can be found of the American youth. 

YOUNG AMERICA 

is our theme this morning, and may God help us to develop 
it for our souls' and the nation's good. We find in looking 
through this text : 

I. His nature. 
II. His teachers. 
III. His only hope. 

I. We find the nature of Young America, and this na- 
ture is a mixture of shrewdness and subtlety. "And they 
sent unto Him their disciples with the Herodians, saying, 
Master, we know that Thou art true, and teachest the way 
of God in truth, neither carest Thou for any man ; for Thou 
regardest not the person of men." What kind of a commit- 
tee was this?" A committee that consisted of the children 
and disciples of the Pharisees, ou the one hand, and the fol- 
lowers of Herod and the Csesarites on the other; the one a 
representative of Israel, and the other a representative of 
Rome; and this committee was quite a mixture, just as we 
find that the American people are a mixture. There is no 
place on this earth where you will find the people so mixed 
up in their race and nationality as in this country. I can 
well remember a good old Christian home where father and 



TWENTY-THIRD SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. 787 

mother were German, and one of their sons had met a daugh- 
ter of another family that did not happen to be German, and 
he chose her for his future companion for life, and those 
poor parents were so broken-hearted that they almost died 
from grief, and the only crime was that the German young 
man intended to marry an English wife. None can under- 
stand what that means unless he has been in a thoroughly 
German family. Oh, how it hurt that father, and how it 
hurt that mother ; and yet, my friends, it is just that kind of 
mixture of races that has made the American nation the 
greatest nation on earth. I can take you to two counties in 
this State where in many families you will find idiots, and 
the reason is that the families have lived in those communi- 
ties for nearly a hundred years, and on account of holding 
their farms together, and their wealth together, have not 
allowed their children to marry or intermarry any other 
people than their own relatives. The secret of the success 
of our American people is that Irish, and French, and Ger- 
man, and all other European nations, have met in a place 
that God has selected for the greatest battles intellectually 
as well as physically to be fought on God's earth. This com- 
mittee, consisting of Israelites and Herodians was a mix- 
ture, and a good representative of Young America. 

2. Not only with regard to the mixture, but also with 
regard to shrewdness. This was no dull committee that was 
sent out. "Then went the Pharisees and took counsel how 
they might entangle Him in His talk. And they sent out 
unto Him their disciples with the Herodians.' 7 It was a 
representative council, and it was a representative commit- 
tee; they took the shrewdest young men they could find, on 
the one hand the disciples of the Council which was held in 
Jerusalem; and, on the other hand, the representatives of 
Caesar at Rome, of one of the greatest governments ruling at 
that time about them; these men were so shrewd that they 
even laid a plan to catch the Son of God; their object was 
to entangle Him; and when you send out a committee to 
entangle the Son of God, it dare not be a committee of igno- 
ramuses; it was a committee of shrewd men; men who un- 
derstood the laws of the Christian Church, so-called; and, 
on the other hand, were the officers, the policemen, ready to 



788 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

arrest the Lord Jesus Christ the first move He made that was 
wrong. These two kinds of men represented in this com- 
mittee were shrewd, just as shrewd as Young America. 
There is no shrewder class of people on God's earth than the 
Americans. When the nations of the old world are to be 
tied to this nation with a cable across the ocean, it takes an 
American to do it ; when the fire is to be brought down from 
heaven that is to bring about communication around the 
world, and to propel the street cars throughout our cities, and 
to run the trains in the near future all over this earth, it 
takes an American, Benjamin Franklin ; when there is to be 
a steam engine puffing up the Hudson, it takes an American 
to do it ; when it is required to find a machine that shall help 
the mother in the home to do her sewing, it takes an Amer- 
ican; when it is necessary to find a wire and a way of talk- 
ing over that from nation to nation, it requires a man that 
is making his home among Americans. In other words, all 
the greatest inventions of the world have been found in this 
new nation, found in this mixture of races, and there never 
was a class of people in the whole country that represented 
Young America any better than these disciples of the Phari- 
sees and the Herodians. 

3. Not only are they shrewd, but it is also true that 
there is subtlety among them. This was not an honest com- 
mittee; they came as if they were the greatest friends of 
Jesus Christ, and said, "Master, we know that Thou art 
true;" what they said was true, but oh, what liars they were 
in their hearts. They said, "Thou teachest the way of God 
in truth ;" they told the truth, but oh ! how they lied in their 
hearts. They said, "neither carest Thou for any man ;" they 
told the truth, but how they lied in their hearts ; They said, 
"Thou regardest not the person of men ;" they told the truth, 
but how they lied in their hearts! They started out with 
the view of entangling Christ, and they appeared before Him 
as His best friends, when, in reality, they were like the old 
serpent in the garden of Eden, and were laying their traps 
to catch Him. You will find a great deal of the American 
idea in this committee. I know of no people on earth who 
are harder to understand than young America. When the 
German has something in his heart and in his head, he 



TWENTY-THIRD SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. 789 

speaks it out and you know just where he stands; you never 
know just where young America does stand. I have been 
fortunate enough in my young career to be thrown into com- 
mittees of many kinds, and into plots of many kinds that 
were developed by Synods and other bodies, and what has 
surprised me more than any one thing is that when you get 
on the inside of an American's plans, to see the difference 
between the real intention and that which appears on the 
surface. The real truth of it is that the masses do not 
understand what the American youth and the American 
plans really are. 

II. Again, there is a great similarity between the teach- 
ers of these men and the teachers of young America. 

1. The Pharisees were very respectable people. Some 
people have the idea that the Pharisee was, before the world, 
considered a bad man ; we shall never understand the Scrip- 
tures if we have that idea of the Pharisee. The Pharisee was 
in Jerusalem what the highest and best educated people in this 
country are to us ; they were the people to whom the Church 
looked up; they were the real leaders; they were the people 
to whom the common people would bow; they were the peo- 
ple who wore their garments to distinguish them as belong- 
ing to the highest caste in the world ; they were looked upon 
as the models of morality; they were the people who had 
more than six hundred laws ruling them in the things that 
are right and wrong. We might very well compare the 
Pharisees of old to the teachers of the American people. Is 
there any class of men in our country who are more re- 
spected than the ministry? than the superintendents of our 
schools? than the teachers of our public schools? than a 
good, honest doctor, than a good, honest lawyer? than a good, 
honest commercial man of any kind? We look up to these 
men and we are led by these men, and the real truth is that 
a comparatively few people are doing the thinking for the 
masses; and consequently our American youth are disciples 
of respected teachers, just the same as this committee of 
disciples of the Pharisees and the Herodians were. 

2. Not only is it true that the teachers are respected, 
but it is also true that they are well organized. "Then went 
the Pharisees, and took counsel how they might entangle 



790 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

Him in His talk." In other words, they went to the great 
Sanhedrin, the great Council — if not to the Sanhedrin, they 
had a council of their own — in order that they might dis- 
cuss the question pro and con, and get the best and shrewd- 
est way to entangle Jesus that could be evolved from their 
minds. I find that the young people of our own country 
are under the counsel of organized instructors just the same 
as this committee of disciples and Herodians. Did you ever 
see a nation on earth more thoroughly organized than our 
own? Years ago we found that when anything was to be 
done in the Church the whole Church did it. Now it is or- 
ganization upon organization, until the Church of God is 
organized to death. Years ago, a man to be a genuine man 
was considered to be true to his family, true to the State, 
and true to the Church. Y'ears ago when you would visit 
your neighbor you would find father at home, and you would 
find mother and the children at home. Years ago you would 
expect to find a small library of a few good religious books 
and a little bit of history, and the family knew those books 
and were better informed in many things than we are to-day, 
with all our great libraries. How is it to-day with us? 
Where is father? Where is he on Monday night? Went to 
the Council. Where is he on Tuesday night? Went to the 
other Council. Where is he on Wednesday night? Where 
is he on Thursday night? Children, is mother at home? 
No, she went to the Council. Where are our people? Did 
you ever see a nation on earth where they are all organized 
and reorganized, until there is hardly any organization left, 
as it is in our own land? We have before our American 
youth to-day hundreds and thousands of instructors, but they 
are all in the council somewhere — all organized. 

3. These teachers of this committee were not only in 
the council, but they had that bad quality of being hypocrit- 
ical. "Then went the Pharisees, and took counsel how they 
might entangle Him in His talk." Then they called in com ■. 
mittees from two different sources, they called half of the 
committee from the Israelites, and said., "You love the Israe- 
lites ; now you see to it that Jesus says nothing contrary to 
our people;" then they called in the Herodian officers, and 
said 7 "Now, you represent Eome, and if you find He says one 



TWENTY-THIRD SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. 791 

word against the government of Rome, grasp Him imme- 
diately; we give you the authority; and in order that He 
may not surmise that you are trying to catch Him, go to 
Him with a compliment, and say, 'Master, we know that 
Thou are true, and teachest the way of God in truth, neither 
carest Thou for any man; for Thou regardest not the person 
of men. Tell us, therefore, what thinkest Thou? Is it law- 
ful to give tribute unto Csesar or not?' And if He says it is 
not lawful to give tribute to Csesar, then, Herodians, grab 
Him. If He says it is lawful, then, disciples of the Phari- 
sees, grab Him; then He is not loyal whether He says 
yes or no; take hold of Him and bring Him, and we 
will see that we get rid of Him! arrest Him!" But they 
went that day to the Lord God of Hosts, who saw the hypoc- 
risy in their hearts ; He saw that their words were one thing 
and their thoughts another, and consequently it is said here, 
"Jesus perceived their wickedness, and said, Why tempt ye 
Me, ye hypocrites?" Am I wrong when I say that young 
America is to-day instructed by many hypocritical teachers ; 
by teachers who profess one thing and mean another? And 
what is the result? Hypocritical teachers will make hypo- 
critical disciples ; hypocritical Pharisees will make hypocrit- 
ical disciples. These disciples were just exactly like their 
masters, and Jesus revealed unto them their hypocrisy. 

III. That leads me to the only hope for young America; 
and the very first thing that I would say for young America 
is that, like this committee, he must be exposed by "The 
Light of the World." This committee would have caught 
you and me very nicely, but they could not catch the Son of 
God. Why? Because He was the Light of the World, and 
that Light of the World cannot be entangled by hypocrisy. 
If there is any one thing that young America needs to-day, 
it is to have its secrets and hypocrisy exposed. Have you 
been reading the newspapers closely these past few weeks? 
I wish I remembered just where this took place, but it is 
current news. Only a few weeks ago, one morning when the 
teachers went to the public schools they discovered a band of 
children standing before that school, with labels on their 
coats saying "Union" — members of the union. Just what 
kind of a union it was I do not know, but those little folks 



792 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

were standing before that schoolhouse with the determina- 
tion that the scholars should not go to school that day ; these 
little children — young America — had gone on a strike be- 
fore the schoolhouse, determined that there should be no 
school that day, and there was no school that day. The best 
thing you can do is to turn a little light on those young men. 
It is not only in one city that this is taking place. During 
the past two months, in the city of Tacoma, Wash., Kansas 
City, and in Chicago, it has been discovered that the schol- 
ars in the schools are organized, so thoroughly organized 
that they are controlling the teachers, and even controlling 
the superintendents. In Chicago alone it has been discov- 
ered that there are forty secret societies in the high schools. 
And what have they done? What have the teachers done? 
What has Chicago done? I believe this is too good not to 
quote, taken from a paper published in the city of Chicago: 
"The principals of fifteen High Schools, and three hundred 
and forty-eight High School teachers attached their names 
to the report addressed to Mr. Cooley, Superintendent of 
Schools, which was as follows : ( Now, my friends, a docu- 
ment signed by three hundred and forty-eight High School 
teachers and fifteen principals of High Schools in the city 
of Chicago means something. It is too valuable for all of 
you not to hear.) 'D(ear Sir : — We, the prinicpals and teach- 
ers of the Chicago High Schools, desire to express to you, 
and through you to the patrons of the schools, our disap- 
proval of High School fraternities and Societies. We be- 
lieve these organizations are undemocratic in their nature, 
demoralizing in their tendencies, and subversive of good 
citizenship; that they tend to divert their members from 
scholarly pursuits and to put the so-called interests of the 
organization above those of the school. The effect of secret 
societies is to divide the school into cliques, to destroy unity 
and harmony of action and sentiment, and to render it more 
difficult to sustain the helpful relations which should exist 
between pupils and teachers. Since the public school is an 
institution supported by public tax, all classes, without dis- 
tinction of wealth or social standing, are entitled to an 
equal share in its benefits. Anything that divides the school 
community into exclusive groups, as these societies do, mili- 



TWENTY-THIRD SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. 793 

tates against this liberalizing influence that has made one 
people out of a multitude. These organizations multiply 
the social functions which demand too large a share of time 
and attention from school work. They offer temptations to 
imitate the amusements and relaxations of adult life, while 
their members have not acquired the power of guiding their 
actions by mature judgment. During the impressionable 
years of youth, school and home should unite their powerful 
influences to prevent the formation of habits that retard 
healthy moral, intellectual and physical growth. It is un- 
questionably true that the full co-operation of these agen- 
cies is hindered by the influence of these societies. In addi- 
tion to this, our experience shows that the scholarly attain- 
ments of the majority of students belonging to these secret 
societies are far below the average, and we have reason to 
believe that this is due to the influence of such organizations. 
In vieio of these facts, ice feel that secret societies ought to 
be discouraged by all reasonable means.'" 

My friends, if the pastor of the First Lutheran Church is 
a crank for expressing his views on this question, he is here 
to say that he has three hundred and forty-eight High School 
teachers and fifteen principals of the High Schools of Chi- 
cago to-day who are cranks like himself. I am glad to say 
to you this morning that some machines, no difference how 
perfect they are, if they have no cranks to turn them, will 
not go, and it is about time we are getting a few more cranks 
all over this world who can see the corrupt influences of 
Christless religious institutions; and young America to-day 
Is fast going to the devil, and you know it. Not very long- 
ago the police of Columbus, O., discovered, down in a cellar, 
a gang of young thieves wearing short pants, with rituals, 
and oaths that were horrible; and things that were stolen 
from all over that city were found in that cellar. Who 
taught those thieves what they were doing? Who taught 
these young men up in Chicago to organize in our public 
schools and fight down many a poor scholar who could not 
go in with them? Who could have taught those young chil- 
dren to stand before the schoolhouse, and dare the teachers 
to go in? Who has done that? You, men and women, who 
have done the same thing right along have given that lesson 



794 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

to the children. I tell you, my friends, we say in German 
that the apple does not fall far away from the tree, and it is 
just as true that our young people are taking up what they 
see fathers and mothers do. What right, after all, had these 
three hundred and forty-eight teachers to condemn the chil- 
dren for doing what undoubtedly some of them were doing 
themselves? What do we need for young America? I will 
tell you what we need. We need to turn the searchlight of 
God's eternal truth cm, until the world can see that the chil- 
dren are what the parents are making them. And I would 
like to know what right the parents of this country have to 
find fault with labeled young boys and girls, when there are 
labeled men and women walking all around them. What is 
the hope of young America? The hope of young America is 
to bring them face to face with the Lord Jesus Christ, just 
the same as this committee of Herodians and disciples. 
When He exposed their hypocrisy by His own light, they 
were a wiser set of young men; and when young America 
sees himself as he really is, in the face of Jesus Christ, he 
will find out that there is a love that goes out to all scholars, 
that goes out to all humanity, and not to some clique ; he will 
find that there is a love that reaches out to help the helpless, 
and not those that can help themslves. May God in His 
mercy help us to see, as these young men saw, when they 
stood face to face with Jesus Christ ! 

2. What is the hope of young America? The hope of 
young America is not only that they may be exposed under 
the Light of the World, but the hope of young America is 
that they may become better citizens of this country. "Why 
tempt ye Me, ye hypocrites? Shew me the tribute money. 
And they brought unto Him a penny. And He saith unto 
them, Whose is this image and superscription?" When they 
handed up the little piece of money there was on that money 
the picture of some man, and over the picture were some 
words written. "Whose picture — whose image is this?" 
They answered, "Cresar's." "Then," said He, "render there* 
for unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's; is that- 
all you have? Have you nothing but that little piece of 
money? Haven't you a soul? Haven't you a heart? 
Haven't you a conscience? Don't you know as you are 



TWENTY-THIRD SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. < 95 

standing before Me that you have another duty besides that 
little piece of money? Kender to God the things that are 
God's.' 7 And they went away, and said not a word. What 
could they say? The hope of young America is that we teach 
them to be obedient .citizens. As long as we are going to 
talk about the chief officials of our country, as if they were 
a set of dummies; as long as we are going to criticize all the 
officials of our city, in the presence of our children ; as long 
as we are going to talk like rebels at the table and in the 
home, what can we expect of young America? We are 
taught in God's Word to pray for our rulers ; we are taught 
in God's Word to honor our rulers; we are taught in God's 
Word to pay our taxes. Not very long ago an assessor 
went to a farmer to get the valuation of his property, and 
the farmer said to his little boy, "Take W r atch and put him 
in the smokehouse." The tax list was read off. "Cattle, 
how many; horses, how many; any dogs?" "Do you see any 
dog around here?" "No." "Well, then, pass on." And the 
assessor did pass on. That man went to the courthouse and 
paid his taxes, and did not need to pay a dollar for his dog. 
Oh, how smart he was, wasn't he? He escaped the law. 
Oh, shrewd America! The boy had Watch in the smoke- 
house. But that man forgot that by that very act he taught 
that boy a lesson that put the boy over here in the Eeforma- 
tory ; it cost him more than a dollar, my friends ; it cost him 
more than the tax of a dog. What is young America? 
Young America is just what father makes him, and you can- 
not afford to teach that boy at home not to pay taxes; you 
cannot afford to teach him to be a rebel to his government. 
What we want our boys and girls to learn is that law is law ; 
that order is order ; that obedience is to obey, and it is better 
to take the last dollar out of our pockets to pay our taxes 
and have an honest government than to cheat the govern- 
ment and teach our boys and girls to be thieves. What is 
the hope of young America ? I answer once more, to render 
to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things 
that are God's. 

3. As I said a while ago, life is more than a little piece 
of money; life is more than a home with carpets and with 
pictures and with instruments of music; life is more than 



796 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

simply an outward show; life, when it is all done, means to 
know how to live, know how to die, and to know just exactly 
where to spend eternity. There is a God in heaven before 
whom we must stand ; there is a God in heaven, before whom 
you and I are responsible and accountable. We have souls 
that need salvation; we have hearts that God wants; we 
have services that God needs ; and consequently, what young 
America needs to-day is to be exposed by the Light of the 
World; made good citizens of our country, the best and 
grandest on God's earth, and then, in that garden of the 
world, saved by Providence for the days when the persecuted 
people from all the world shall flock to that other side of the 
hemisphere to find that glorious home of America, where the 
world's battles shall be fought out, and from whence the 
salvation of the world shall flow through the missionary 
spirit ; it is there, above all places on earth, that every young 
man and every young woman should be found children of 
God, no difference how young they are, no difference where 
they are; then there will be a salt that will make itself felt 
as a great savor in this world, and will not be like that use- 
less salt that must be thrown out. What a horrible thing 
in this great, good land of ours for a man to have his body 
and soul lost and damned! It is a terrible thought, and if 
I can say one word this morning that will wake up the 
fathers and mothers and the children to the salvation of the 
whole family, and the whole community, and from this com- 
munity, the whole world, then I have accomplished my mis- 
sion, and may God bless it. 

"Unto Caesar let us render 

All the things that Caesar's are, 
Custom, fear and tribute tender, 
Both in time of peace and war. 

"Government is by God's order, 
Civil rule by His command, 
For protection to our border, 

Safety, peace, throughout the land. 

"By the will of God appointed, 

All must fear the powers that be; 
Who lays hands on God's anointed, 
Sins against His majesty." 



TWENTY-THIRD SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. 7<)J 

Unto God let Qesar render 

Soul and body, heart and hand. 
We and Csesar, all as subjects, 

Must before King Jesus stand. Amen. 

PRAYER. 

O God, our Heavenly Father, we thank Thee for this day so glorious, 
and for such a privilege as to proclaim Thy Gospel from morning until night ; 
we Thank Thee for the privilege of worshipping in this temple this morning; 
we thank Thee for the new house of worship which we have begun to-day 
to Thy glory in the north end of this city. We pray Thee that Thou wilt 
help us to render to Csesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the 
things that are God's. We offer a special prayer this morning for the twenty 
millions of school children who are being taught by their parents and by 
their instructors, either to go wrongly or to go rightly ; and we pray Thee, 
Heavenly Father, that Thou wilt help these teachers to understand their 
great responsibility to the little children, and their great responsibility to 
their children's God. We pray Thee that Thou wilt put into the hearts and 
minds of our hearers this morning good thoughts, the best thoughts ; stir 
them all up if they need stirring up, until they can all see that there is only 
one right way to live and only one right way to die, and only one right 
place to spend eternity, and that is with Thee, forever and ever. O God, if 
there should be one in this house this morning who has heard his last ser- 
mon, may he die in Christ; may he not die without being baptized in the 
name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost; and those of us who have had 
the privilege of being Thy children from infancy, help us not to become 
unthankful nor forgetful of the necessity of having Thy grace constantly 
offered to us in Thy holy sacraments. O Lord God, help us all now to sum 
up our prayers in Thine own prayerful words : 

Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name. Thy kingdom 
come. Thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven. Give us this day our 
daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass 
against us. Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil : For Thine 
is the kingdom and the power, and the glory, forever and ever. Amen.. 



TWENTY=FOURTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. 



TWICE TWELVE ARE TWELVE, 



Matt. 9: 18-26. 



W %nfiTW HILE He spake these things unto them, behold, there came a certain 
tL^LJM ruler, and worshipped Him, saying, My daughter is even now dead; 
but come and lay Thy hand upon her, and she shall live. And 
Jesus followed him, and so did His disciples. And, behold, a woman, which 
was diseased with an issue of blood twelve years, came behind Him, and 
touched the hem of His garment : for she said within herself, If I may but 
touch His garment, I shall be whole. But Jesus turned Him about, and 
when He saw her, He said, Daughter, be of good comfort; thy faith hath 
made thee whole. And the woman was made whole from that hour. And 
when Jesus came into the ruler's house, He saw the minstrels and the 
people making a noise; He said unto them, Give place: for the maid is not 
dead, but sleepeth. And they laughed Him to scorn. But when the people 
were put forth, He went in, and took her by the hand, and the maid arose. 
And the fame hereof went abroad into all that land. 

Sanctify us, O Lord, through Thy truth: 
Thy Word is truth. Amen. 



Bear Christian Friends: 

The question of to-day in many churches is, How shall 
we draw the people? And how many worldly schemes are 
resorted to in order to draw the masses ; but, unfortunately, 
though from worldly curiosity the people do come now and 
then, just as soon as that worldly scheme has passed by, 
where are they? Again the question presents itself, How 
shall we draw the people to God's house? It seems to me 
the ninth chapter of Matthew answers the question, when 
we study those facts which He here gives us, not in chrono- 
logical order, but as striking instances in the life of Jesus. 
We have first mentioned in this chapter, Jesus healing the 
young man from Capernaum who was let down through the 

798 



TWENTY-FOURTH SUNDAY ALTER TRINITY. <99 

roof on account of the multitude, shoeing us thai Jesus 
Himself is the One that draws the people. Not only do we 
find that He drew the people when this young man was 
healed, but as He passed along lie saw a certain man named 
Matthew, sitting at the receipt of custom, and Jesus said, 
Follow Me, and Matthew followed. Very likely in Matthew's 
own house the publicans and sinners began to crowd, until 
the house was filled, and the Pharisees began to find fault 
with the Savior on account of the crowd, and the kind of 
crowd that gathered around Him. In other words, Jesus 
drew the multitude, and while correcting these Pharisees of 
their error, the door opens again, and now another committee 
comes in, from John the Baptist, wondering why it was that 
the disciples of John were fasting, while the disciples of Jesus 
were not ; how it happened when they were sitting around the 
table eating, that John's disciples were not eating; and so 
He settled that question for that committee. And just about 
that time the door was opened again, and in came a ruler 
from Capernaum, a ruler of the synagogue, a man who was 
there appointed, not so much to preach as to arrange the 
Divine service, and his face shows there is trouble there, and 
he falls down before the Lord Jesus Christ and asks that 
He come right with him to his own home, for his little daugh- 
ter is dead, and He shall raise her up — and the little daugh- 
ter was twelve years of age, Luke tells us, and the woman 
who met the Savior on the road and touched the hem of his 
garment, was sick for twelve years; and thus we learn the 
great lesson of the morning, that 

TWICE TWELVE ARE TWELVE. 

May the Holy Spirit this morning bless these words to 
our eternal good. 

I. Once twelve is twelve. It was about the time that 
Jesus was nineteen years of age that a little child was born 
at Capernaum, the daughter of a ruler, and oh, what an in- 
terest they took in that little daughter. It was the first one. 
How they cared for her until she grew up to be a year old, 
and watched her day by day as she learned to walk ; watched 
her day by day as she learned to talk; watched her day by 



800 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

day as she began to form sentences, and every day some- 
thing new in the home. You remember that first child of 
yours, do you not? How you watched her develop day by 
day ! Now this child grew on year after year, until she was 
twelve years of age, and all at once the only child took sick. 
It is not simply a matter of a day, but days roll by, and in- 
stead of getting better as she did before, she got worse, and 
worse, and worse. At first the mother alone sat there and 
took care of the child, but at last she says, "Father, don't 
go away from home to-day; our daughter is too sick," and 
he stays with her, and the mother stays with her, and they 
watch over her day and night, until they are about worn out ; 
and, lo, they both discover that she is actually dying. Mat- 
thew tells us this ruler went to the Savior and said, "She is 
dead;" Mark tells us that he reported to the Savior that 
"she is at the point of death;" Luke tells us that "the girl 
lay at home a dying;" No difference, then, which one of 
these statements we take, the fact is that when Jairus left 
home the daughter was dying, and by the time he reached 
Jesus he thought she was dead. Now this man Jairus believed 
in Jesus Christ; he had possibly heard of the young man at 
Nain having been raised from the dead, and when he saw 
his only daughter was about to breathe her last, he said, 
"Mother, I am going to go and find the Savior if He is to 
be found" and he started out with the determination not to 
come back until he found the Son of God, and whether the 
daughter dies or does not die, by the time they get back 
He will help her and raise her up. And so he goes down 
and falls at once before the Lord Jesus Christ, and, in the 
language of our text, worshiped Him. Oh, the true humility 
of this ruler! No difference if there are publicans and 
sinners sitting around the Savior, this man is not too proud 
to go into their presence, and to fall down on his knees be- 
fore the Lord Jesus Christ. What a wonderful faith he must 
have had, to leave home when his only child was dying, to 
leave home with the matter fixed in his heart that he is 
going to bring the Savior that will raise her up whether 
sick or dead ; and so his faith is answered by the Lord's com- 
ing with him when he does go. 



TWENTY-FOURTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. 801 

We find that in a very short time there is a large crowd 
of people, and a woman comes and touches the hem of His 
garment, and instead of going on, as He had gone before, I le 
stops; the whole crowd stops; there is an argument going 
on between the disciples and their Savior, and Jairus, the 
man who is wanting the Savior up at his house, is standing 
there, and oh, how worried about the time being lost; the 
thought is in his heart, oh, that that woman would have 
staved away just now when I need Him so badly up at my 
house; but Jesus walks along slowly and talks about their 
matter, and settles it, and then goes on. Every moment 
must have seemed to Jairus like an hour. But at last they 
come to the house, and they hear the music and the singing. 
According to the custom of that day, in the presence of the 
dead, there had to be hired choirs and hired minstrels, and 
singing and music went on during the days of mourning 
until the child was laid to rest. The Savior comes up to 
the house, and oh, what a cold reception He receives. He 
tells them the maid is sleeping, and they laugh Him to 
scorn, as if they did not know that the little child was dead ; 
as if they had not been appointed by the mother; as if all 
the funeral arrangements had not been made; as if there 
was to be no funeral in a few hours ; they knew better than 
this Jesus of Nazareth, and so they mocked Him, and laughed 
Him to scorn, as much as to say, You might just as well have 
stayed where you were; we are running this funeral; but 
the Lord Jesus said to all of them except Peter, and James, 
and John, and the father and mother, Just stay out; -We 
only will go into that room ; and they went in, and He took 
the little girl by the hand and said, Maid, I say unto thee, 
arise; and she arose! she was dead, but she arose by the 
power of Him who had said. "I am the Resurrection and 
the Life : he that believeth in Me, though he were dead, yet 
shall he live: and whosoever liveth and believeth in Me 
shall never die." He handed the daughter back to her pa- 
rents and said, Give her bread to eat ; and then walked out 
with the little daughter and said, Now this is the kind of 
answer I give you for your cold reception. Oh, what a 
beautiful reply! What a beautiful answer! When the 
brothers of David said he was just a boy and could not fight, 



802 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

David did not stand and argue; he simply picked up his 
pebbles and sling and went out and slew Goliath, and cut his 
head off, and brought the head back; that was his answer. 
When people say you cannot do this, and you cannot do 
that, do not stop and argue, but go and do it; that is the 
answer. Beautiful answer of Jesus! The little girl, twelve 
years old, stands before the people that received the Savior 
so very coldly, and there we learn the great mathematical 
problem that once twelve is twelve. 

II. Then we learn that another twelve is twelve. When 
this little child was born, when Jesus was nineteen years of 
age, somewhere in that same neighborhood, it was reported 
that a very prominent woman, well known, possibly, to 
this ruler of the synagogue, was very sick; it may be that 
this ruler was the pastor of this very woman. What her name 
was we do not know. The Holy Spirit never tells us the 
names that the world would tell, and always does tell us the 
names that the world would not. It would not help any 
one in the world to know what this woman's name was. 
There are times when it becomes our duty not to mention 
the names of people. But, I say, I believe that Jairus him- 
self was the pastor of this woman; she took sick the very 
time that his little babe Avas born. The little child grew to 
be one year of age ; and very likely this woman came there 
and said, I have been sick just as long as your babe has been 
born. Another year passed by and the little child was run- 
ning around; and it may be that this woman picked up the 
child and said, I know how old you are; I took sick about 
the same time that you were born, and here I am sick yet. 
Another year rolled by, and the little child was still larger, 
and the woman was just as sick as she was before ; she had 
seen this physician and that physician; spent money here 
and spent money there, and was still sick, and I can hear 
her saying to the little girl, You are three years old and 
I have been sick three years. The little child grows to be 
larger, and she is now six years of age and begins to run 
about, and may be passes the home of this poor woman who 
is just able to step out and get a little fresh air; her money 
is going and her health is leaving her more and more; in- 
stead of growing better she is constantly getting worse; I 



TWENTY-FOURTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. 803 

can see as she stands in the presence of that little girl and 
says. Von are growing so, my Little girl ; it was just six years 
ago that 1 took sick. Time rolls on and the little girl is ten 
years of age, and this woman sees the little girl again, and 
she says, Why, my dear girl, you are growing up to be a 
young woman, and you were a little babe when I took sick; 
then I had my little home; 1 had a little money laid away; 
but now the doctors have got my money; my little home 
is gone; my strength is gone; I am getting weaker and 
weaker every day; just think of it! I took sick Avhen you 
were born, and I am sick yet, and you are getting stronger 
and I am getting weaker and weaker every day. Two years 
more roll by, and the little girl, just as old now as Jesus 
was when He went to the temple and was lost from His 
parents, takes sick, and the Avoman hears of it, and she says, 
It was just twelve years ago that I took sick; my sickness 
began when that little girl was born ; and she had a personal 
interest in that little girl all her life. So I see the story 
as I read it. The report came to her that the little girl is 
going to die, and she says, Why doesn't the good Lord take 
me? Here I am, sick for twelve long years; my money all 
gone; my home is gone; my strength is all gone, and I can 
hardly get my breath; I am simply existing; I do not seem 
to be any good for anybody in the world; and there that 
little girl, the only daughter of her family, the only hope 
of the great ruler of the synagogue ; oh, how I wish God had 
taken me and let that little girl live. Then she looks down 
the road and she sees a man coming in haste ; it is her pastor, 
very likely; it is the ruler of the synagogue, and as he comes 
along she says, "Where art thou going, my pastor, my shep- 
herd ? ,? "I am hunting Jesus," he answers, "I want Him to 
help my daughter; she will be dead before I get back; I 
want to find Jesus who raised the young man over at the 
gate of Xain the other day; if I can find Him I will never 
leave Him until He promises to raise my daughter." Then 
she thought, If He can raise the dead, He can help me; if 
He can lift up that little daughter who is sleeping the sleep 
of death, then I know He can help me; but what shall I do? 
According to Leviticus 15 :9 I dare not, with my sickness, 
touch a man. What will I do? When the crowd comes I am 



804 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

too weak to stand before that crowd ; they will run over me 
and trample me into the dust. I know what I will do ; I will 
stand here until He comes ; I will wait until I see my pastor 
coming with the great Shepherd of souls, and when He comes 
along and just about has passed me by, I will go around be- 
hind Him and slip up and touch the hem of His garment." 
Why did Jesus go with Jairus to his house, and why did 
He refuse to go with the nobleman? The Lord Jesus knew 
very well what that woman's thoughts were. He did not 
go home with Jairus on account of His daughter, but He 
went home with Jairus that He might pass by the woman 
that was twelve years sick. All at once she hears the tramp- 
ing of feet, and hears the voice of the multiude, and she gets 
ready; she watches for the center of attraction and sees 
Jesus, the Son of God; she waits patiently until He comes 
near her, and then she slips around behind the crowds up 
between the men ; they do not know of her sickness. "Law 
now, or no law, I am going to go to Him ; if I dare not touch 
His hands or His face, I will at least touch the hem of His 
garment, and I believe that He will help me." And so she 
pushes through the crowd, and reaches through, and just 
touches the hem of the garment of Jesus, and He stops and 
wants to know who touched Him. Then the disciples laughed 
and said, "The idea of asking who is touching Thee in the 
midst of this crowd, when we are crowded about Thee on 
all sides." "But," says the Savior, "there has virtue gone 
out from Me ; there has a helping power gone out from Me." 
And the strange thing was the moment the woman touched 
the hem of His garment, she was well; she knew she was 
different from before. The multitude stopped. The ques- 
tion was, Who touched the Savior? The Savior knew, but 
He did not want to tell it ; He wanted her to tell it, who was 
helped, and the woman who a moment ago dared not touch 
His person, came and fell down, and said, "I touched Thee ; 
Thou hast helped me, my Lord and my God ; I touched the 
hem of Thy garment; and here I am; I am well; my sick- 
ness began the very day that little child was born up here, 
or at least the very year, whom you are going now to raise 
from the dead; and Thou hast done more for me than for 
that child; I have been practically dead for twelve years, 



TWENTY-FOURTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. 805 

and Thou hast healed me; oh, my (Joel, 1 love Thee?!" And 
Jesus said, "Daughter, thy faith hath made thee whole;" 
and the multitude moved on. 

Twice twelve are twelve. Wonderful story of God, our 
Savior ! Says some little child, Twice twelve are twenty-four, 
not twelve. And yet, my friends, the little girl was twelve 
years of age; the woman was sick twelve years, and twice 
twelve all took place m twelve years ; twice twelve are twelve. 
And so, my dear friends, there are many things in the world 
that at first sight seem to be contradictory, and yet they are 
true. In the first place I would say that the dead are not 
dead. That seems like twice twelve are twelve. When Jesus 
came up to the house He said, "The maid is not dead, but 
sleepeth," and they laughed Him to scorn; and yet she was 
asleep, strange as it may seem. If I were to go up into yonder 
cemetery this morning and stand in the midst of all your 
graves, and say, "These are not dead, but sleeping," the world 
might say that is as impossible as twice twelve are twelve; 
and yet the fact is they all are sleeping, and God will raise 
them up. The man that goes to bed at one o'clock and rises at 
two, has not any more slept than Adam did, who went to bed 
in his grave six thousand years ago, and will rise in the 
future. When you put your little babe to sleep, and it wakes 
up in live minutes, it is no more of a sleep than if it slept 
twelve hours. The last man that shall be buried and rise 
the next day will not sleep any more in his grave than 
Adam and Eve did in theirs. So, after all, God will raise 
them all up, and twice twelve are twelve. 

It may seem like a contradiction to say that the sick shall 
outlive the ivell, and yet that is often true. We go into a 
lionie and see a sickly mother, and draw the conclusion that 
she cannot live long. A strong husband supports the family, 
and we say, What a blessing it is that his strong arms are 
able to do the work of four hands. We visit the home later 
and find the crepe hanging on the door. Is the mother dead? 
No, it is the strong husband. Two days later the corpse is 
taken to the cemetery; the mourning widow is the sickly 
woman who lives on; the strong man sleeps in his grave. 
This seems impossible, but twice twelve are twelve. The 
little girl in good health died; the sickly woman lived on. 



806 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

The smartest people in the world arc sometimes the- 
dullest. That sounds just about the same as twice twelve 
are twelve. These people thought they were so intelligent, 
and they were. They were not a set of idiots up there, play- 
ing the harp, and singing songs during that funeral; they 
were the enlightened people of the neighborhood, and yet 
when Jesus came and said, "The maid is not dead, but 
sleepetji," they laughed Him to scorn, as much as to say, 
Thou must think we are stupid, not to know whether the 
child is dead or alive; and yet they proved to be very stupid 
only a few moments later; there stands the child, twelve 
years of age, alive before them. Oh, how many people there 
are to-day who think they are too smart to believe in Christ; 
how many people there are who are constantly going on 
through the world, rejecting everything that is good and 
holy, thinking they are far too intelligent to be church mem- 
bers; but on that great Judgment Day, when they stand 
face to face before their- God, they will discover, after all, 
that the smartest people in the world were the dullest. 

As we look over this lesson carefully, we find that God's 
delays are not too long. When Jairus was standing there in 
the presence of the multitude, and heard the Savior dis- 
cussing about this woman who touched the hem of His gar- 
ment, undoubtedly he thought every moment was an hour, 
and why does my Savior wait, and wait, and wait, when I 
need Him so badly; but at last Jesus steps into his home 
and raises up his daughter, and Jairus discovers that He 
came just in time. Just in time. When He went to raise 
the young man in the city of Nain, He did not go up to the 
house; He did not come when the boy was sick; He did not 
come just when he died, but when they were about to let 
him down into the grave; but Jesus came before he went 
into the grave, and raised him up, just in time. And so you 
and I may have our problems to solve, and it seems some- 
times they never will be solved; and it seems sometimes as 
if God never will answer our prayers, but some day He will 
answer the prayer, and when it is answered, Ave shall look 
back and discover that He answered it just in time. God's 
delays are never too long. 



TWENTY-FOURTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY, 807 

One more tkoughl and I am through, and that is, that 
though ice cannot see our God, ire may still (ouch Bis gar- 
ment. This woman did not touch the person of Christ, and 
yet she touched the hem of His garment and was healed. 
Oh, how we sometimes Long to touch the Savior who raised 
the dead, and long to see Him face to face; but what shall 
we do? We have the promise that He is in our midst, but 
we cannot see Him ; we cannot touch Him ; we cannot handle 
Him. Do not forget, my friends, that this woman did not 
touch Him ; she only touched the hem of His garment. 

"Well," some one says, "if we only had His garment 
here;" but if you had that here you might touch that gar- 
ment all your life, and it would do no good; it was not the 
garment, it was her faith in the Lord Jesus Christ; but 
this great lesson we ean learn, that we do not have to touch 
the physical body of Jesus Christ to touch His garment. 
Where is His garment to-day? His Word is His garment. 
Holy Baptism is His garment. The Lord's Supper is His 
garment. You touch the water in Holy Baptism, connected 
with the Word of God; you just as much touch Jesus as 
that woman did who touched the hem of His garment. You 
take the bread and wine in the Lord's Supper, and you 
touch Jesus just as much as the woman who was healed 
from her sickness of twelve years. You hear the Word of 
God this morning. It is not my word; it is the Word of 
Jesus Christ, and He left His Word in your midst, to- 
gether with His Holy Sacraments, that you might touch 
them, and they might touch you, and you might have Him 
who is within His Sacraments and within His Word, and 
thus have eternal life. May God give you the faith that this 
woman had; may He give you the faith that Jairus had, 
and may all of us fall down and worship Him, and be thank- 
ful for the touch that has saved us. Amen. 



TWENTY=FIFTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. 



DANGEROUS DECEPTIONS. 



Matt. 24: 15-28. 



m 



{{'^J^HEN ye therefore shall see the abomination of desolation, spoken of 
by Daniel the prophet, stand in the holy place (whoso readeth let 
him understand:) Then let them which be in Judaea flee into the 
mountains: let him which is on the housetop not come down to take any- 
thing out of his house : neither let him which is in .the field return back 
to take his clothes. And woe unto them that are with child, and to them 
that give suck in those days! But pray ye that your flight be not in the 
winter, neither on the Sabbath day : for then shall be great tribulation, such 
as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall 
be. And except those days should be shortened, there should no flesh be 
saved: but for the elect's sake those days shall be shortened. Then if any 
man shall say unto you, Lo, here is Christ, or there; believe it not. For 
there shall arise false Christs, and false prophets, and shall show great signs 
and wonders; insomuch that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the very 
elect. Behold, I have told you before. Wherefore if they shall say unto you, 
Behold He is in the desert; go not forth; behold, He is in the secret cham- 
bers ; believe it not. For as the lightening cometh out of the east, and 
shineth even unto the west ; so shall the coming of the Son of man be. 
For whosoever the carcass is, there will the eagles be gathered together. 

Sanctify us, O Lord, through Thy truth: 
Thy Word is truth. Amen. 



Dearly Beloved in Christ: 

The Church Year, as you well remember, began about 
four or five weeks before the civil year, and thus it ends also 
before the civil year. In the first half of the Church Year 
we showed you the great things of the persons of God, and 
in the last half of the year, without any festivals, we deal 
with the great doctrines of the Trinity, and, as we approach 
the end of the Church year, we think of those things that 



TWENTY-FIFTH SUNDAY AFTEH TRINITY. SOD 



b 



are to happen in the future — "the last things." This bein 
the twenty-fifth Sunday after Trinity, we look into the 
future and look for the coming of the Savior. We are 
warned in this lesson by the Savior Himself not to be de- 
ceived. "And Jesus answered and said unto them, Take 
heed that no man deceive you.'' God is warning us, toward 
the end of this Church Year to be very careful that when 
the final end comes, of your life or of the world, that you 
do not find yourself a deceived man, a deceived woman. It 
is a terrible thing to be deceived even in domestic affairs. 
That woman that must say to herself, I am an unhappy 
woman because I have been deceived, is to be pitied; that 
man wTio has been deceived in his marital relations is to be 
pitied ; that young girl that must say, with tears in her eyes, 
I have been deceived, is to be pitied ; but on that last great 
Judgment Day, when men shall stand face to face before 
their God, and must then exclaim, We have been deceived, 
what a terrible thing it must be ! It is to this deception that 
our Savior refers when He says, "For there shall arise false 
Christs, and false prophets, and shall show great signs and 
wonders; insomuch that, if it were possible, they shall de- 
ceive the very elect." I w^ant to speak to you this morning 
a, few moments on this theme: 

DANGEROUS DECEPTIONS. 

I. It is a dangerous deception to think we cannot be de- 
ceived by false prophets or by false Christs. Some people 
seem to think they cannot be deceived. There never was a 
man on earth who could not be deceived. There are other 
men in the world just as intelligent as we are; and there 
are angels — bad angels — that are more intelligent than 
we are. Just as surely as the angels in heaven know T more 
than men do, just so surely the bad angels are more intelli- 
gent than w r e are, and if it w r ere not for the grace of God 
which sustains us, w^e should all be deceived by them. 
The Savior shows this when He says ". . if it vrere pos- 
sible, they shall deceive the very elect." So there is even 
danger of professed Christians being deceived, and unless 
they expect to be faithful to Christ until death, they w T ill be 



810 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

deceived. It is therefore a mistake, I say, and a dangerous 
deception for us to think that Ave cannot be deceived. We 
are warned here in this lesson against false Christs, and 
against false prophets. Oh, how many arose in the days of 
the Christian era claiming to be the Christ, and how many 
there have been who have claimed to be prophets, and have 
deceived thousands and thousands of people. There are few 
Christian people to-day avIio realize that that one false 
prophet Mohammed, has misled more people than profess to 
be Christian to-day; and he is only one of many. To say, 
then, that people cannot be deceived is to sa}^ that history 
is not at all true. Thousands and thousands of people in 
every community are led without thinking, and deceived day 
by day, by those false teachers and false prophets. Let us 
not for a single moment imagine that Ave cannot be deceived ; 
indeed, unless we are sustained by the loving grace of Christ, 
and by His Avritten Word, Ave shall be deceiA T ed. 

II. It Avas a dangerous deception to tit ink that Jeru- 
salem could not be destroyed until the final judgment. In 
the twenty-third chapter of Matthew, Ave hear those terrible 
Woe! woe! woe's of the Savior, in His final speech to the 
Pharisees. The disciples heard that speech of Avoe, and they 
heard Him make the statement that the "house is left unto 
you desolate," and they could not imagine that that great 
temple in which they were, could eA r er fall, and so they led the 
Savior out and showed Him this magnificent structure, and 
seeing that structure they wondered Avhen the last day 
should come, and "what shall be the signs of Thy coming;" 
for, reasoned they, no temple like this can ever fall until 
the Judgment Day; Jerusalem cannot be destroyed unless 
the AA r orld comes to an end. That Avas a magnificent temple. 
This very day I AA T as reading in one of the recent geographies 
gotten up for the Sunday-school course, and I find these 
Avords concerning that temple: 

"The temple on Mount Moriah av; one of the wonders 
of the world in the days of Christ. It* was a terraced 
mountain of marble buildings surmounted by coronals of 
glittering gold. With its four or five enclosing walls, its. 
magnificent portals, its great courts, its colonnades and 
porches, it constituted a great series of structures more 



TWENTY-FIFTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. Sll 

beautiful and costly, probably, than any thai ever have been 
reared on earth. It was built by Herod the Great probably 
in the Grseco-Roman style of architecture, with columns 
and floors and walls of white marble, beautifully carved and 
in many places covered with solid plates of gold. These 
plates of gold reflected, when the sun rose, such dazzling 
effulgence, that the eye could not sustain its radiance. At 
a distance, according to Joseplms, the temple appeared to 
be a huge mountain covered with snow." 

It was in this temple that Jesus said, "Woe unto you 
scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites;" it Avas outside of this 
temple that He announced that not one stone of this temple 
should remain on top of the other, nor of this city; indeed 
these disciples were so sure that if that temple should fall, 
if those walls were to fall, that surely the end of the world 
would come. "And as He sat upon the Mount of Olives, the 
disciples came unto Him privately, saying, Tell us, when 
shall these things be? and wmat shall be the sign of Thy 
coming, and of the end of the world?" In other words, they 
could not realize that the falling of that temple and the 
tearing down of that great city, could take place any other 
time except when Jesus should come again to judge the quick 
and the dead, and yet they were deceived in this, and our 
lesson this morning is one of those beautiful lessons that 
shows the city of Jerusalem first as a picture of the end 
of the world to come later. There never was a city more 
impregnable than the city of Jerusalem; there never was a 
temple more impregnable than that temple, and yet they fell. 
Joseplms w T ho was born in Jerusalem in the year 37 and died 
in Rome in 93, attended that battle and the destruction of 
this great city, and I have in a previous sermon in this same 
series told you of that wonderful destruction and the hor- 
rible scenes that took place, and I will only tell you this 
morning that over a million souls perished in that city, and 
ninety-seven thousand were taken captive and sent down to 
Egypt, and that many and many were there starving to death, 
mothers even eating their own children. Never w^as there 
such suffering in the history of the world, and we are told by 
the Savior it never should occur again. "For then shall be 
great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the 



812 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

world to this time, no, nor ever shall be. ." The city fell ; the 
walls crumbled; the plow turned the furrow where those 
large rocks once lay; the temple was burned and the records 
were destroyed. There is no record in the world to tell that 
a child that shall be born in the future could possibly be 
the child of David — the son of David. Providence has once 
and forever settled it that Jesus Christ was the promised 
Son of God ; but O, what a mistaken idea it was among those 
disciples that day to think that Jerusalem could not fall 
unless the end of the world came. 

III. It is a dangerous deception to think that the end 
of the tuorld is not coming. The old tabernacle consisted, 
as you well know, of a court, and a holy place, and the holy 
of holies. The temple on Mount Moriah was built after the 
same pattern, — first was the court, then the holy place, 
and then the holy of holies. This tabernacle and this temple 
were a picture of the history of the world. From the days of 
Adam to the days of Christ were the court; in the days of 
Christ we find the holy place, and from that time on until 
the end of the world will be the holy place; and at last, 
having passed through the court, and through the holy place, 
on the great Judgment Day we shall enter heaven, the Holy 
of Holies. Jerusalem was a picture of the world at large, 
and when the disciples asked the question, "When shall these 
things be, and what shall be the sign of Thy coming and of 
the end of the world?" the Savior gave an answer to both of 
those questions, not only what should be the end of Jeru- 
salem, but what should be the end of the world. If we think, 
therefore, that the end of the world is not coming, we shall 
be deceived just the same as those people were deceived 
when they thought that the end of Jerusalem could not 
come before the Judgment Day. As I said a moment 
ago, the temple did fall, the walls were torn down, and 
to-day some of those stones are covered with a hundred 
feet of earth. Where is the ancient city of Jerusalem? It 
has- gone from the face of the earth as it was in the days of 
Christ. So there are people to-day who think that this 
great rock of earth must stand forever. There are people 
who think that this talk about the Judgment Day and about 
the end of the world is all nonsense; but, mark you, those 



TWENTY-FIFTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. 813 

people are deceived, and they are dangerously deceived, and 
to have that thought, that the end of the world is not com- 
ing, is at the bottom of all infidelity; it leads us to reject 
the Bible; it leads us to reject the Savior, and the only 
hope, therefore, of salvation. It is a dangerous thing to 
think that God is not telling the truth when He says the 
end of the world is coming. It is true, it may not come 
soon, for He says; "This Gospel of the kingdom shall be 
preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations; 
and then shall the end come" In other words, just as 
soon as the Gospel of Christ has reached every nation on 
earth, just as soon as no one will be without being respon- 
sible to God for his salvation, just so soon the end is coming ; 
and it is coming, I say, just as certainly as Titus stood be- 
fore the walls of Jerusalem, just as certainly as the temple 
was destroyed. Just as certainly as the plow turned the 
furrow where once stood the walls of Jerusalem, just so 
surely this great Jerusalem of the whole world shall be 
transformed, on that great day when God shall come with 
power in all His glory. 

IV. It is a dangerous deception to think we have plenty 
of time to escape damnation. Our time to flee to Christ is 
short. Let us therefore pray God for mercy. "Then let 
them which be in Judaea flee into the mountains : Let him 
which is on the housetop not come down to take anything 
out of his house: Neither let him which is in the field 
return back to take his clothes. And woe unto them that 
are with child, and to them that give suck in those days! 
But pray ye that your flight be not in the winter, neither 
on the Sabbath day." In those days, dear friends, it was the 
custom to lock the doors of the city, and at most, not to 
travel more than one mile on the Sabbath day. He refers 
here to that time in the history of Jerusalem when Cestius 
with his army was to come and make his first appearance 
before the city. It was at that time that the people had a 
chance yet to escape, and it was at that time in history that 
many of the Jews did escape and crossed over the Jordan 
into Parea and stayed at Pella, while the city afterwards 
was surrounded by Titus and his army. Those that had the 
opportunity to escape that day had no time to go back and 



.S14 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

get clothing; if they were on the roof, it was their duty to 
jump off the roof and escape for their lives; they had no 
rime to go back and get the clothing or the treasures they 
might have left back, because if they went back they would 
have to stay there and perish. It is to that day that Jesus 
here refers in this prophecy: "Neither let him which is in 
the field return back to take his clothes. And woe unto them 
that are with child, and to them that give suck in those 
days! But pray ye that your flight be not in the winter, 
neither on the Sabbath day." Why not in the winter? 
You know how hard it would be ior expectant mothers, or 
those who had their little children, to take their flight in 
the winter; you know how hard it would be for them to 
escape on the Sabbath day, when the gates were closed, or 
they could not go more than one mile without breaking the 
law. It was then that the Lord said they should pray for 
mercy, and pray that these days might be shortened, that 
they might escape, lest even the very elect should almost be 
lost. Oh, that great day when they had to flee for their 
lives ! There we have a picture of our duty in the present 
day. I say it is a dangerous deception to think that Ave 
have plenty of time to escape damnation. I do not believe 
the average man does think that he can die a child of the 
devil and go to heaven; but, O, how many there are that 
seem to think there is plenty of time, and we are not readj 
this winter to go to the catechetical class; Ave are not 
ready this winter to be instructed further in God's Word, 
but some time Ave will. That is the way they argued in the 
city of Jerusalem; mothers argued, After a Avhile Ave will 
flee ; men said, A few more Aveeks and then we will go ; but 
they waited too long; the doors Avere closed; the crosses 
Avere set up on the hill, where Jesus before had been cruci- 
fied, and many a time five hundred in one day were there 
slaughtered on the crosses — they Avaited too long; as I said, 
a million souls perished within those Avails; ninety-seven 
thousand were taken captiA T e, and O, what a terrible death 
it was, and what a stench for those to stay with their dead 
within those walls ! What was the trouble? They were 
deceived; they waited too long and did not escape Avhen 
Jesus told them to. And so I saA T it will be in the davs to 



TWENTY-FIFTH SUNDAY AFTER TKIMTY. 815 

come. There are men who have the opportunity right now 
to be saved, who will not. They are going to wail too long. 
There are women who mighl be saved this winter yet, but 
no, they have 1 got to have a few more dances, a few more 
pleasures, a few more duties to perform, before they have 
time to be saved. "For what shall it profit a man, if he shall 
gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?" Oh, that the 
people would not be deceived and wait so long. Hundreds 
and thousands are this morning groaning upon their sick 
beds that will live long years after men who this morning 
think they are well, will be dead and in hell. It is time to 
escape! It is time to flee to Jesus Christ, the only Savior 
of the world! It is time right noAV to take instruction in 
God's Word, and be on the safe side. Oh man, you have no 
right to sleep another night without being a child of God! 
V. It is a dangerous deception to think that God's house 
is- no better than any other house. It is here that God's 
means of grace are found, and it is here that to reject these 
is the abomination of desolation. "When ye therefore shall 
see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the 
prophet, stand in the holy place, (avIioso readeth let him 
understand) ; then let them which be in Judaea flee into the 
mountains/' etc. Let us find out just what Daniel did say. 
Dan. 9 :27 : "And he shall confirm the covenant wuth many 
for one week : and in the midst of the week he shall cause 
the sacrifice and oblation to cease, and for the overspreading 
of abominations he shall make it desolate, even until the 
consummation, and that determined shall be poured out 
upon the desolate." Dan. 11 :31. "And arms shall stand 
on his part, and they shall pollute the sanctuary of strength, 
and shall take away the daily sacrifice, and they shall place 
the abomination that maketh desolate." Dan. 12 :11 : "And 
from the time that the daily sacrifice shall be taken away, 
and the abomination that maketh desolate set up, there shall 
be a thousand two hundred and ninety days." Examining 
these prophecies carefully, Ave discover that Daniel already 
told us the great truth that there should be an abomination 
of desolation in the temple of God, and that this should 
take place in the prophetic year, here mentioned days, and 
-so it did. A man cannot read such a book as that of Daniel, 



81G 



THE GREAT GOSPEL. 



nor of Isaiah, Avithout seeing, as plainly as Ave can see tlie 
stars in the night, that surely God is the Author of the Bible. 
In this chapter then the Savior refers to that prophecy when 
He says, "When ye therefore shall see the abomination of 
desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, stand in the 
holy place, (aa t 1ioso readeth, let him understand.)" 

What do Ave find by understanding that great doctrine? 
We find it is dangerous deception to think that God's house 
is no better than any other house. What took place in that 
great temple? Where once the holy of holies stood, Avhere 
once God met His people, and the great high priest, we find 
now the Eoman eagle; Ave find the true religion gone, the 
true worship gone, and the idolatrous religion of Rome 
standing in the place Avhere once God Avas Avorshiped in 
truth and holiness. Some one may say, What is the differ- 
ence where that eagle was? What is the difference Avhere 
the Romans were? It makes a wonderful difference, my 
friends. God's house, set apart only for true AA T orship, should 
be held as God's house, and kept for true worship. It does 
make a difference whether you have a dance down in the 
dance hall, or in the Church of God ; it does make a differ- 
ence whether you have a show in the Church or someAvhere 
else; and it is a dangerous thing to think that it makes 
no difference where we are. There is too much of that idea 
among us to-day; too many people think it is all right to 
laugh and talk at home, and it is all right in the Church of 
God. Remember that this house has been set apart for the 
Avorship of the Triune and liAdng God, and let us remember 
it was dedicated to Him. It is not our house, it is God's, 
and, being God's house, let us remember here is the place 
for the means of grace; here is the place for the Word of 
God to be preached to us; here is the place for the holy 
sacraments to be administered; here is the place for adults 
and children to be baptized, if they are Avell enough to bring 
to the house of God; here is the place for us to come to 
the Holy Supper, when able to come. In other Avords, when- 
ever you turn the house of God into a play-room, or any- 
thing else but for the Divine service, .you present to that 
house the abomination of desolation. Think of that temple 
at Jerusalem, once the glorious temple on Mount Moriah, 



TWENTY-FIFTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. 817 

— the Holy City, the city that was built to receive the King 
of kings and the Lord of lords — think of that temple be- 
coming a slaughter house, where men took each other's lives, 
and fell over each other as murderers; and the eagle of 
Koine stands where once stood the holy temple, within the 
holy of holies. It was the abomination of desolation. In 
other words, the true worship was driven out, heathen re- 
ligion was put in its place, and down went the city with its 
walls and with its temple. It is an awful thing to turn the 
house of God into an abomination of desolation. »j 

VI. It is a dangerous deception to think that one re- 
ligion is just as good as another. It was not true that the 
religion of the Roman army, with all its myriad of gods, 
was as good as the worship of the true and living God. We 
are warned in this chapter to be careful about false religions. 
"Then if any man shall say unto you, Lo, here is Christ, or 
there; believe it not. For there shall arise false Christs, 
and false prophets, and shall show great signs and wonders ; 
insomuch that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the very 
elect. Behold, I have told you before. Wherefore if they 
shall say unto you, Behold He is in the desert ; go not forth : 
behold He is in the secret chambers; believe it not." Here 
Ave find the picture so plain by the Savior, of the false re- 
ligions, that it seems to me no one can read this chapter 
without knowing that we are living in dangerous times. Not 
only once, but hundreds of times since Christ uttered these 
words, have there been men who have called themselves 
Christ; men who have called themselves prophets of God, 
when God never chose them. We are living not very far in 
the present time from a false prophet who first called him- 
self Elijah, and now the First Apostle of the Christian Cath- 
olic Church. The false prophets are around to-day just the 
same as they were two thousand years ago, and we still have 
people who say, Come over here in the desert and I will show 
you the Christ; come into the secret chamber and I will 
show you the Christ, and a religion just as good as the 
Church; but Jesus Christ Himself says; "Wherefore if they 
shall say unto you, Behold He is in the desert ; go not forth : 
behold He is in the secret chambers; believe it not." Are 
you going to believe Christ, or the world? Whom are you 



818 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

going to believe? That is the great question. Let us not for 
a single moment be deceived. The world is full of deceived 
preachers to-day; the world is full of deceived professed 
Christians. Hundreds and thousands all over this world 
seem to think that Christ is here and there, when He is not 
there at all. Jesus Himself ought to know where He is. He 
tells you where. "Lo, I am with you ahvay, even unto the 
end of the world. 1 ' With whom? With those that He sent 
out to preach the Gospel. With whom is He? " Where two 
or three are gathered together in My name, there am I in 
the midst of them" — and nowhere else. God knows where 
He is. I remember in a convention held at Johnstown, Pa., 
one time, ministers of the Gospel who were worshipers in 
the secret chambers were there to defend those things. I 
read this chapter. I said, " Whenever you preach a sermon 
on that text, and explain it as the Holy Ghost wants it ex- 
plained, I will give up." I have not heard the sermon yet. 
When you get into God's eternal Word you find out that 
hundreds and thousands are deceived, and the dangerous 
deception is this, that they do think Jesus is where He is not. 
Jesus Himself knows and let us go right down and learn 
this verse by heart, and pray over it, and think over it, until 
we shall be His, and His only. 

VII. It is a dangerous deception to think ice are safe to 
follow the masses. "For wheresoever the carcass is, there 
will the eagles be gathered together." It is no trouble to 
know what happened out on yonder prairie Avhen we see 
the buzzards going in a certain direction ; they have found a 
carcass, and where the carcass is, there you will find the 
buzzards, where you find the carcass, there you will find the 
birds of prey. And how many people there are in the present 
day who seem to think that wherever the masses are found, 
there is the right. It never was true and it never will be 
true. Whenever you find the abomination of desolation 
taking place in the house of God, instead of the true re- 
ligion; whenever you find that the true religion is crowded 
out and a false religion crowded in ; whenever you find this, 
the next thing you will find is that the people do not care 
whether they have any religion at all, and the next thing 
vou will find is a carcass — rotten characters, rotten fami- 



TWENTY-FIFTH {SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. 819 

lies, rotten communities, and the masses will always go 
where they find the corruption. In 1885, believing thai a 
minister of the Gospel ought to know the world, and to 
know whereof he is speaking, I, in company with a police- 
man, visited all the lowest dens of vice in New -York and 
Baltimore, as well as Chicago and San Francisco, and if 
there was any one thing that made me have a lower esti- 
mate of man than of woman, it Avas this, that wherever we 
saw the sign up "For men only," we found that dive crowded 
to the doors with men. Whenever you can show to the world 
a carcass, there you will find the masses, and whenever you 
think you are safe because you believe as everybody believes, 
and think as everybody is thinking, you are wrong, and the 
great majority of people are only looking for a carcass. 

When the city of Jerusalem lost her true religion, when 
she rejected the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, then she had 
to reject the Father, too; then she had to reject the Holy 
Spirit, for God the Father said, He that w T ill not receive 
Him will not receive Me. "He that rejecteth Me rejecteth 
Him that sent Me." You cannot reject Jesus Christ without 
rejecting the Holy Ghost; and you cannot reject the Holy 
Spirit and Christ, without rejecting the Father. The truth 
was that God was forsaken in Jerusalem. The walls had to 
crumble and the pestilence had to take the place of the holy 
of holies, and O, what a desolate place it was ! — the abomi- 
nation of desolation! Beware, therefore that we do not 
follow the masses. It was the masses that turned in the 
days of the flood from the true and living God, and left 
Noah and his family standing alone. It was the masses in 
the days of Christ that cried out: Crucify Him! Crucify 
Him! and left a few lonely disciples. It was the masses of 
the w r orld that caused the Dark and Middle Ages. It was 
the masses that caused the great w T ar in the East at the 
present time, and it will be the masses on that last great day 
that will stand on the wrong side, with the goats, instead 
of on the right side, with the sheep. Be very careful, there- 
fore, that you are not deceived. Learn to do your own 
thinking, and learn to think as God would have you think, 
and be sure that you stand on the side of God, and do not 
try to get God to stand on your side. How r many people 



S20 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

there are who have their fixed notions, and go to the Bible 
to find something to harmonize with their fixed notions, in- 
stead of having no notion at all, and going to God and get- 
ting God's mind. Let us therefore be very careful that 
we are not deceived, and follow the masses instead of the 
Master. 

Some one may say at this moment, "Oh, these things do 
not concern me." Not very long ago in a temperance meet- 
ing in the city of St. Louis, a certain man was pleaded with 
to give his influence to down the liquor traffic, which is damn- 
ing so many souls, and he arose and made this speech : "This 
thing does not concern me." His Avife and his daughters 
had been aw T ay on a visit, and a day or two afterwards he 
ordered his horses hitched up and drove down in his fine 
coupe to the depot to receive them, and to make further 
plans for the future. He stepped out of his carriage, walked 
into the depot, and heard this message: "A wreck!" but 
that did not concern him. In a city where there are twenty- 
five railroads, what does he care about a wreck? A moment 
later he heard "A wreck on the Mississippi!" It was the 
very road his wife and children were coming on, and he 
was a little concerned. A moment later, "A wreck twenty- 
five miles from the city and many passengers killed." He 
was a little more concerned just then. He went to find an 
engine that he might go out, but none was to be found ; then 
he began to send messages, "Five hundred dollars for an 
engine to go to the wreck,' 1 but he could not find any. A 
moment later another message "One thousand dollars for an 
engine to go out those twenty-five miles," but the answer 
came back, "The last engine was gone, and the physicians 
are out taking care of the dying." There he walked up and 
doAvn the depot and every moment seemed an hour. At last 
the report came, "The train is coming with the dead." The 
first car he looked into he saw his wife, and one of his 
daughters lying on a coal pile, dead; walking back to the 
next car he found the other daughter, with her body crushed, 
dying; as she breathed her last breath, he received another 
message: "This train was wrecked because the engineer in 
charge of it was drunk!" Then he was concerned about the 
temperance question, when he laid his family doivn in death. 



TWENTY-FIFTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. S21 

There are people into whose ears you can thunder God's 
holy law from day to day, — they are not concerned; you 
can tell them of the Gospel of Christ as their only salvation, 
— they are not concerned; you can tell them to have faith 
in Jesus, — they are not concerned; you can tell them to 
prepare for death, but they are not concerned; you can tell 
them about the abomination of desolation, but they are not 
concerned; you can tell them about the destruction of Jeru- 
salem, — they are not concerned; you can tell them about 
the Judgment Day to come, but they are not concerned; but 
some day Avhen they wake up and find that the 'Judgment 
Day has come, and that their eternal damnation is certain 
forever, they will be concerned, but it will be too late. May 
God help us this morning to be prepared to meet Him now, 
is my prayer. Amen. 

PRAYER. 

O God, our Heavenly Father, we thank Thee for this hour, and we 
thank Thee that this Temple has still got Thy pure Word and holy sacra- 
ments, and that the abomination of desolation has not taken place here. We 
thank Thee that we have in our midst men, women and children who love 
Thy truth, and who cannot be driven out of Thy house, because they love 
Thy truth. We pray that Thou wilt be with all those assembled here this 
morning; and wilt Thou help those that are not with us this morning to live 
that Christian life and love the house of God and love to dwell there until 
death. We pray Thee that Thou wilt help the Church at large, to keep Thy 
Word pure before the people. Help that every chapter and every verse may 
be explained as Thou wouldst have it explained. Thou Holy Spirit, Author 
of this W r ord, we ask Thee for a blessing from on high this morning; we 
pray Thee for a blessing from on high this morning ; we pray Thee for a 
total consecration to the great Savior, Jesus Christ, who died on Calvary 
that we might live. Help us, Heavenly Father, to dare to stand alone. Thy 
Son Jesus Christ was not crucified on a cross on which others were crucified ; 
those crucified on His side were not on His cross, nor crucified as He was, 
for our salvation. He stood alone, He was hanging there alone, that we 
might come to Him alone and trust in Him, and live in Him. Heavenly 
Father, hear our prayer, the prayer which Thou hast given to us : 

Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name. Thy kingdom 
come. Thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven. Give us this day our 
daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass 
against us. Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil : For Thine 
is the kingdom and the power, and the glory, forever and ever. Amen. 



TWENTY=SIXTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. 



THE APOSTLES' CREED ON THE JUDGMENT DAY. 



Matt. 25: 31-46. 



«r 



iVJPMH HEN the Son of man shall come in His glory, and all the holy 
angels with Him, then shall He sit upon the throne of His glory : 
And before Him shall be gathered all nations ; and He shall sep- 
arate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the 
goats: And He shall set the sheep on His right hand, but the goats on the 
left. Then shall the King say unto them on His right hand, Come, ye blessed 
of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation 
of the world : For I was an hungered, and ye gave Me meat : I was thirsty 
and ye gave Me drink : I was a stranger and ye took Me in : Naked, and ye 
clothed Me : I was sick and ye visited Me : I was in prison and ye came 
unto Me. Then shall the righteous answer Him, saying, Lord, when saw 
we Thee an hungered, and fed Thee? or thirsty, and gave Thee drink? 
When saw we Thee a stranger, and took Thee in ? or naked, and clothed Thee ? 
Or when saw we Thee sick, or in prison, and came unto Thee? And the 
King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as 
ye have done it unto one of the least of these My brethren, ye have done 
it unto Me. Then shall He say also unto them on the left hand, Depart 
from Me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his 
angels : For I was an hungered, and ye gave Me no meat ; I was thirsty 
and ye gave Me no drink: I was a stranger and ye took Me not in:- naked, 
and ye clothed Me not : sick, and in prison, and ye visited Me not. Then 
shall they also answer Him, saying, Lord, when saw we Thee an hungered, 
or athirst, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not minister 
unto Thee? Then shall He answer them, saying, Verily I say unto you, 
Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to Me. 
And these shall go away into everlasting punishment : but the righteous into 
life eternal. 

Sanctify us, O Lord, through Thy truth : 
Thy Word is truth. Amen. 



Bear Christian Friends: 

It is meet and right that in a series of sermons giving the 
whole plan of God's work in our midst, we should flu ally 

822 



TWENTY-SIXTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. 823 

come to the Judgment. In the Apostles' Creed we eon less 
Sunday after Sunday, and day after day, that Jesus Christ 
is coming to judge the quick and the dead; and yet we find, 
once in a while, a stubborn Christian who thinks it not just 
the thing to confess the Creed — at least, I notice their 
mouths closed — and I have often wondered how a child of 
God could keep his mouth closed when the Christians say, ki l 
believe in God the Father, Almighty, Maker of heaven and 
earth. And in Jesus Christ His only Son, our Lord, who 
was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the virgin Mary, 
suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified , dead and 
buried. He descended into hell ; the third day He rose again 
from the dead; He ascended into heaven, and sitteth on the 
right hand of God, the Father Almighty; from thence He 
shall come to judge the quick and the dead. I believe in the 
Holy Ghost; the Holy Christian Church, the communion of 
saints ; the forgiveness of sins ; the resurrection of the body, 
and the life everlasting. Amen." I believe every word of 
that Creed from the bottom of my heart, and I never want to 
know that the sun has risen a single day that I have not con- 
fessed that to my God. Did you ever stop to think that 
Jesus said : "He that will not confess Me before men, him 
will I not confess before My Father in heaven?" I want 
you to understand, my dear friends, that if you will not con- 
fess the Apostles' Creed to-day, there is a day coming when 
you will confess it, and that will be on the great Judgment 
Day. As I read this text over and over throughout the past 
week, I could not refrain from thinking of this Apostles' 
Creed, and consequently I have taken as my theme : 

THE APOSTLES' CREED ON THE DAY OF JUDGMENT. 

This Creed, as you are well aware, is divided into three 
articles, and these three articles shall be the three divisions 
of my sermon this morning. 

I. When that final day has come, when God has come 
with all His holy angels, and He shall divide the people to 
the right and to the left, as a shepherd divideth his sheep 
from his goats, on that day every one will believe in God the 
Father Almighty, as we confess in the first article of this 



S24: 



THE GREAT GOSPEL. 



Creed. I say, every one will believe that. Now we have 
infidels. We have men who do not quite know whether the 
Bible is God's Word or not. Now Ave have men who do not 
know for certain whether Christ is coming or not. Now we 
have people who are not quite certain whether God shall 
raise up the dead or not. Now we have men who do not 
believe that Jesus of Nazareth was the Messiah. Now Ave 
have people who believe that they can have communion Avith 
the dead, and reject the Mediator; but I would have you to 
understand Avhen the tSoii of Man comes in His glory, with 
all His holy angels, and all nations stand before Him, then 
in that hour, Avhen every knee shall boAv before Him in 
heaven, and on the earth and under the earth, in that hour 
no man aa ill say, I do not believe in God. That Apostles' 
Creed aviII have a meaning on that last great day that you 
do not realize this morning. ♦ 

And not only is it true that there Avill be no infidels on 
that day, but it is also true that every one will know that the 
Father of the Lord Jesus Christ is the Father of His chil- 
dren. On that day this great King, sitting upon His throne, 
Avill say, "Come, ye blessed of My Father, inherit the king- 
dom prepared for you from the foundation of the world;" 
and this He Avill say to those to His right, and, mark you, 
He says this to the saved in order that the damned may 
hear it. And finally He speaks to the damned, and tells 
them to go, in order that the saved may see them go. That 
final judgment will let every man, whether lost or saved, 
positively know that there is a Father in heaven. His chil- 
dren aa ill see the cursed cursed, and the cursed will hear the 
saA^ed proclaimed saved. 

On that day every one will know that God the Father 
Almighty is maker of heaven and earth. Luther's catechism 
tells us that He made all creatures visible and invisible; and 
that the chief Adsible creature is man, and the chief invisible 
creatures are angels. There were Sadducees in the days of 
Christ; there are Sadducees to-day; there are people who say 
there are no angels, that that is an old fable; but, my dear 
friends, on that last day, when the dead shall rise from their 
graA^es, and those who are still living shall in the twinkling 
of an eye be changed, and all the nations of the earth shall 



TWENTY-SIXTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. 825 

Stand to the right or to the left, and the Son of God has 
come with all His holy angels, no one will say on that day 
thai He is not the maker of the invisible creatures. No man 
will say on that day there are no angels; and when they see 
the meat Judge turning to His left and saying, "Depart from 
Me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil 
and his angels," no man will doubt on that day that there 
are bad angels. I tell you, my friends, the old Apostles' 
Creed will mean something on that Judgment Day that you 
do not comprehend this morning. 

Nor will you for a single moment, doubt the fact on that 
day that men may be lost as Avell as saved. I know there 
are a great many people in the present time who think that, 
no difference how they live, when they die we will call in 
a preacher to preach a sermon, have the choir sing "Asleep 
in Jesus,'' and that God will take every rascal home to 
heaven; but on that great day when you see the multitude 
standing to the left as the goats, and another multitude 
to the right as the sheep; on that day, when you find that 
they are separated by the mighty Word of God that made 
the worlds, on that day no one will doubt that there are men 
who are wicked, and that there are men who are righteous. 
On that day no man can point over to the right and say, 
"Look at the hypocrites;" on that day you do not need to 
point to the left and say, "Look at the hypocrites ;" on that 
day there will be no hypocrisy; men of God will be men of 
God, and they will stand by themselves ; and the children of 
the devil will be children of the devil, and they will stand 
by themselves; and the gulf is fixed, and God the Father 
Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, will be confessed by 
the saved as well as by the damned. Every knee shall bow 
before Him in heaven and on earth and under the earth. 
Every angelic knee shall bow before the great King on that 
day; every saved man will bow before Him, and thank Him 
for salvation ; and every lost man will give a farewell bow : 
"Oh, my God, I might have been saved, but I would not; but 
T am justly damned. I bow the knee." 

II. Not only is it true that every one will confess on 
that day the first article of the Creed, but they will all un- 
derstand the meaning of the second. "And in Jesus Christ 



82G THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

His only Son our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy 
Ghost, born of the virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius 
Pilate, was crucified, dead and buried. He descended into 
hell; the third day He rose again from the dead; He as- 
cended into heaven, and sitteth on the right hand of God 
the Father Almighty; from thence He shall come to judge 
the quick and the dead." Nobody will deny this on that 
day. No one on that day will deny that the Savior is the 
Son of God, when the Son of Man shall come in His glory, 
and all His holy angels with Him ; on that day, when, with 
one word He shall divide the multitudes of nations ; on that 
day Avhen He shall raise up all the dead ; when He shall sit 
there as King of kings and Lord of lords, no one on that day 
will deny that He is the true Son of God. 

Nor will they deny on that day that He is the Son of 
man. He says the "Son of man" shall come in His glory. 
When He arose on that ascension day, we read in the first 
chapter of Acts, they saw Him go up, and the angel said, 
You shall see Him come as you saw Him depart. We read 
this morning in Kev. 1, 7 that He shall come in the clouds 
and every eye shall see Him, and they also which pierced 
Him. In other words, they shall notice on that day the 
very marks in His hands that they made themselves on Cal- 
vary's hill; and the man who took the sword and drove it 
into His heart shall see the King with the mark in His 
breast. There will be no doubting that day about this Son 
of God, and Son of man. 

And no one will doubt on that day that He is the same 
Son of God that stood before Pontius Pilate, but, O, how 
changed the scene! You have looked with admiration upon 
that beautiful picture of Christ before Pilate. On that great 
Judgment Day you will see the thing changed around, and 
Pontius Pilate will stand before the Christ! On that day 
there will be no question about the fact, as I said a moment 
ago, that He was crucified, and His hands will show the 
marks, and His feet and His breast will show the marks; 
His forehead will show where the crown of thorns rested. 
On that day no one will deny that Jesus Christ was dead. 
On that day no* one will deny that Jesus Himself had been 
down in the prison of hell. Some people confess the Creed 



TWENTY-SIXTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. &Z ( 

as if they were afraid to say that -Jesus descended into hell. 
What more natural than that He who conquered death should 
the first thing go down into the very abyss of hell and show 
the devil that lie had conquered him also? And when Ee 
stands there on that day and says to the lost, "Depart ye 
cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his 
angels," the devil will know, and his angels will know, and 
the lost will know, and the saved will know, they will all 
know that Christ Himself was there on the morning of the 
resurrection. 

And I am certain of another thing, that when the dead 
have all come out of their graves, they will never doubt the 
resurrection of Jesus any more. There they will stand, 
from Adam down to the last grave that Avas just covered — 
all will stand before Him. On that day they need not stand 
with their mouths closed, and not know whether they want 
to say "He arose from the dead" or not. On that day they 
will not doubt that He is coming again, and that He as- 
cended into heaven, when they see Him coming in all His 
glory. On that day they will not doubt the Judgment, when 
the Judgment is already taking place. On that day a saved 
man will not doubt it was a good thing to go on the narrow 
way that leads to life. On that day there will be no Univer- 
salists on either side. On that day every one will know that 
now we are standing before our God, to receive His eternal 
decision. 

III. And, my dear friends, on that great day, the third 
article of the Creed will have a meaning to some people it 
never had before. "I believe in the Holy Ghost." How 
many people there are who look upon the Holy Ghost as 
just a kind of influence instead of a Person. The Holy Ghost 
is just as much God as the Father is. The Holy Ghost is 
just as much God as the Son is. The Holy Ghost is the One 
that calls, and gathers, enlightens, sanctifies and keeps us. 
And the surprise to a great many people on that day will be 
that there will not one word be said about faith. Here, 
while we are preaching the Gospel, the question all the time 
is, Do you believe in Christ? The message is plain that "He 
that believeth and is baptized shall be saved," and yet, when 
we come to that last great day, the Judge Himself will not 



828 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

ask a single one on His right, "Do you believe?" Nor will 
He say to one on His left, "You are damned because you do 
not believe." How does it come? Does the Bible contra- 
dict itself? No. AVhen I go into your orchard in the winter 
I ask you, Is this tree a butter apple? Is this a Grimes' 
golden? Is this a pippin? But when I go out there and the 
apples are ripe, I ask no questions; I pick up the fruit and 
eat it. We are now living in the time when faith must be 
wrought in our hearts to make us children of God. On that 
last great day of Judgment there is no question about faith 
an}' more. On that day the question comes, What is the 
fruit? On that day you will find the people surprised on 
His right, and you will find the people surprised on His 
left. But He will turn to those on His right and say, "Come 
ye blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for 
you from the foundation of the world : For I was an hun- 
gered and ye gave Me meat; I Avas thirsty and ye gave Me 
drink; I was a stranger and ye took Me in; naked and ye 
clothed Me; I was sick and ye visited Me; I was in prison 
and ye came unto Me. Then shall the righteous answer 
Him, saying, Lord, when saAv we Thee an hungered, and fed 
Thee? or thirsty, and gave Thee drink? When saw Ave Thee 
a stranger, and took Thee in? or naked, and clothed Thee? 
Or Avhen saAv we Thee sick, or in prison, and came unto Thee? 
And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say 
unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least 
of these My brethren, ye haA r e done it unto Me." In other 
Avords, there was a time Avhen you were taught to confess the 
Apostles' Creed ; there Avas a time when you were to confess 
that you believed in the Holy Ghost; and the Holy Ghost is 
the Person of God who works faith in the heart, and when 
you had faith in your hearts, in Me, then you began to live 
My life on earth; you began to liA T e a life of sanctification ; 
then you began to look upon eA r ery felloAV-man as your 
brother; then you began to look around, and if you found 
anyone Avho was hungry, you gave him bread, not because 
you thought you were going to earn heaven thereby, but be- 
cause you could not help it; then you had My Spirit in your 
heart; and when you saw any man thirsty, you gave him 
drink; then you had My Spirit in your heart, and when you 



TWENTY-SIXTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. 829 

saw anyone a stranger, you took him in; when yon saw any- 
one needing clothing, yon clothed him; when yon saw any- 
one sick yon visited him; when yon saw anyone in prison 
yon went unto him and tried to help him; in other words, 
when yon served these, My brethren, yon served Me, and you 
would not have served Me if you had not had faith in Me be- 
forehand, and to-day I am telling you of the fruits of faith 
and the fruits of sanctification, and these come from faith 
in the Holy Ghost as you confessed in times past when you 
said, "I believe in the Holy Ghost." 

And then He turns to the left, and there you will find the 
people who had no faith in God; who had no faith in the 
Bible; who had no faith in the Holy Spirit; who were simply 
selfish, and did not even care for their own people ; they were 
looking out for nothing but self; and He will say to them, 
"Depart from Me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared 
for the devil and his angels; for I was an hungered and ye 
gave Me no meat; I was thirsty and ye gave Me no drink; 
I was a stranger and ye took Me not in ; naked and ye clothed 
Me not; sick and in prison and ye visited Me not." Then 
they turn to Christ and say, "Lord, when saw we Thee an 
hungered, or athirst, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in 
prison, and did not minister unto Thee? Then shall He an- 
swer them, saying, Verily I say unto you, inasmuch as ye did 
it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to Me/' Now 
most commentators try to make us believe when the Savior 
said "the least of these," He pointed to those to the right, 
but I say there is no reason for that. When He spoke of 
those to the right He called them His brethren; He did not 
say to the lost, "Inasmuch as ye did it not to the least of 
these My brethren." The real truth of it is that those to the 
right are His brethren, and those to the left are not His 
brethren, and consequently He leaves the word "brethren" 
out, and simply says, "As ye did it not unto the least of 
these — your own lost brethren. You not only hated the 
Church of God and the Christians, but you did not care for 
your own lost companions. Therefore, depart, ye cursed, 
into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels." 
In other words, you lived no life of sanctification; you did 
not believe the Apostles' Creed; you did not live a holy life:, 



S30 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

you had no love for humanity; you have no fruits of a faith 
in Me. When I read these words it makes me tremble. I 
am asking myself the question all the time, How many 
preachers will be on the right side. How many professed 
Christians will be on the right side? The other day a man 
tried to make me believe he was one of these charitable men 
spoken of in Matt. 25, and he gave me an example of his 
charity. He said at Alliance, O., sl man was killed; no one 
knew who he was; he was lying there by the roadside; they 
carried him to the morgue ; no one would have paid any at- 
tention to him, but when they looked at his watch-charm 
they found that he was a Mason. "And," he says, "we went 
to work as Masons and got a coffin for him and sent him back 
to Chicago, and we paid the way for his wife, gave him a nice 
burial ; and that is the kind of institution I belong to." I 
said, "Suppose you had found me, and I had no watch-charm, 
what would you have done? Just because I would not have 
had the same kind of charm on my chain, you would have 
left me right there, wouldn't you?" Is that love? Is that 
the kind of fruit that is going to stand on the Judgment Day? 
There are too many Christians in the present day that are 
simply looking out for some one whom they are bound to 
help ; who are simply showing charity where they must, but 
on that last great day the question will not be, Did he have 
this kind of charm, or that kind; the question will not be, 
Did he belong to your church or somewhere else ; the question 
will be, When you found anyone hungry, did you give him 
something to eat? When you found a man thirsty, did you 
give him something to drink? When you found a man 
naked, did you clothe him? When you found a man in pris- 
on, did you visit him? When you found a man needing help, 
did you try to help him, and did you do it for Christ's sake, 
and because you loved humanity? And if you did not, de- 
part from Me — preacher, church council, no difference 
who — depart from Me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, pre- 
pared — not for you — but prepared for the devil and his 
angels. I tremble for the salvation of professed Christianity 
in the present day, because there is so little of it that goes 
into the spirit of true Christianity, into the true teaching of 
the Bible. 



TWENTY-SIXTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. 831 

The old Apostles' Creed is getting a now commentary this 
morning, by this final Judgment. On that day people will 
not question whether they ought to be church members or not. 
The Apostles' Creed says, 1 believe in the Holy Christian 
Church. Every immortal soul standing to the right of the 
great King will be in church on that day, and every one 
standing to the left must hear the call to the right, "Come, 
ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for 
you from the foundation of the world," As I said a while 
ago, you will find no hypocrites in the church on that day; 
you will hear no man say, "I have no faith in the Church." 
On that day every saved man will say, "I thank my God that 
I was baptized; 1 thank my God that I went to the holy com- 
munion ; I thank my God that I heard the sermons that told 
me the truth ; I thank my God that I accepted Christ as my 
only Savior, and that now I am His forever," and they will 
all say with one voice, "I believe in the holy Christian 
Church ;" and the last sigh that you will hear from the lost 
and damned is, "Oh, that we had been members of the Chris- 
tian Church." 

On that day there will be no question as to belief in the 
forgiveness of sins. On that day it will be discovered that 
those who had forgiveness of sins through faith in Jesus 
Christ were the ones who did their good works to His glory. 
On that day it will be found that those who laughted at for- 
giveness of sins will be damned, not only for what they did, 
but for what they did not do. Did you notice in reading the 
description of the Judgment, that the Lord Jesus Christ will 
condemn the lost for what they did not do? I was hungry, 
and ye did not feed Me; I was thirsty and ye gave Me no 
drink ; I was naked and ye did not clothe Me ; I was in prison 
and ye did not visit Me. In other words, you are damned, 
not so much for what you did as for what you did not do. 
How many people in the present day say, I never do any- 
thing very bad ; if they would just think a little they would 
say, I never did anything that was very good; and, if I un- 
derstand it, you will also be damned for your not doing. A 
man has no business to live in this world and do nothing. 
God did not give you the strength to carry your own body 
and another man's, and then sit down, too lazy to carry your 



832 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

own body. God put us here to do something for humanity; 
to do something for the weak and the oppressed. 

On that day there surely will be no question about the 
resurrection of the body and about the life everlasting. 
"And these shall go away into everlasting punishment: but 
the righteous into life eternal." I had the pleasure when I 
first entered the ministry of having a public debate with a 
Universalist preacher, and in order that the debate might be 
more interesting he said he wanted to debate from the orig- 
inal language. I was pleased to accept the challenge, and 
the debate took place, in the southern part of Ashland 
County. I went there with my Greek Bible. When he met 
me I read this last verse of the 25th chapter of Matthew, 
"And these shall go away into everlasting punishment; but 
the righteous into life eriternal." I read this verse in Eng- 
lish. He stood up, looked wise, and said : "According to 
the English translation you might well believe that heaven 
is eternal, and hell also ; but according to the original Greek 
you will find that is not so." He did not know that I had 
my Greek Bible with me, but I handed it over to him to read, 
and he could not read it. So that ended that debate. He 
wanted to debate from the original language, and could not 
even read it. What I want to call your especial attention to 
is this, that in this last verse of the only description that 
Jesus ever gave of the Judgment, He says that those to the 
right shall 'go into life eternal ; and those to the left shall go 
into punishment everlasting; and in the Greek language the 
word "everlasting" and "eternal" is the same word, almvioq. 
If, therefore, heaven is eternal, hell must be. If hell is not 
eternal, heaven is not. The same adjective that describes 
heaven describes hell. Therefore, if we admit that hell is 
not forever, we thereby consent that heaven is not forever. 
If we admit that heaven is forever, we thereby must admit 
that hell is forever. On that last great Judgment Day there 
will not be a single Universalist. Everybody will know on 
that day that the saved are saved forever, and that the 
lost are damned forever. This is the word of the Eter- 
nal Judge, who said, "I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life, 
and no man cometh to the Father but by Me." Then you will 
see demonstrated on that day the great truth, "Many are 



TWENTY-SIXTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. 833 

railed, but few arc chosen." On that day you will under- 
stand as you never did before what Christ meant when lie 
said, long ago, and says to us this morning, "Enter ye in at 
the straight gate: for wide 1 is the gate ; and broad is the way, 
that leadeth to destruction, and many there he which go in 
thereat. Because straight is the gate, and narrow is the 
way, which leadeth unto life, (turf far (here ha (hat find it." 
May God help you all this morning to be ready now for the 
Judgment Day to come. 

Jesus asks you to study His Word — 
Jesus, your Savior, your God, and your Lord. 
Your dear soul He has come to save this day — 
What do you say? 

He is longing your soul to save from hell : 
Shall He come, or shall Satan always dwell 
In your heart, where there never shall be day? 
What do you say? 

Is there more than one thing for you to say, 
W r hen all hell is night and heaven is day? 
There is not; but if you will delay — 

O Judgment Day ! Amen. 

PRAYER. 

O God, our Heavenly Father, we thank Thee this morning for the bless- 
ings of the past days and the past years, and for the blessings we have had 
as miracles of mercy to proclaim Thine everlasting Gospel, and to show the 
final reward to those who are faithful to Thee, and the final destruction of 
those who have done nothing for themselves, or for the children of God. We 
pray Thee this morning that not one soul that is found in this house may 
depart without becoming a child of God. We pray Thee to give us a determ- 
ination to prepare for that great day to come, and thereby be the better 
fitted to live in the present hour and in the present years. Help us to realize, 
Heavenly Father, that life itself is not worth living unless we live it as 
children of God. Therefore we pray Thee that Thou wilt cleanse us of all our 
sins, and for Thy mercy's sake, wash us and keep us, and cleanse us in the 
future, and help that that day may not arrive without our being fully pre- 
pared to enter into the joy of the children of God. We pray Thee that 
Thou wilt help every one in this house this morning to come near to Jesus.. 
Open our hearts and make Thy throne therein. We pray Thee that Thou 
wilt help that the message that has gone into these many ears may reach the 
hearts and kindle the flame that shall enable the tongues to proclaim these 
great truths. Help that the ends of the world may hear the same message 
before Thou comest in glory with Thy holy angels. Heavenly Father, pre- 
?3 



834 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

pare us for that Judgment Day. We ask it in the name of Jesus, who taught 
us to pray : 

Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name. Thy kingdom 
come. Thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven. Give us this day our 
daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass 
against us. Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil : For Thine 
is the kingdom and the power, and the glory, forever and ever. Amen. 



A SERHON ON SECRET SOCIETIES 



DELIVERED AT TMB FIRST LUTHERAN CHURCH IN MAN5FIBLD BY THE REV. 
S. P. LONG, SUNDAY EVENING, JUNE 28, 1903. 



I Kings 18:21. 



"TTND Elijah came unto all the people, and said, How long halt ye be- 
^-* tween two opinions? If the Lord be God, follow Him; but if Baal, 
then follow him. And the people answered him not a word." 



Dear Christian Friends and Hearers: — 

Biding through the country this afternoon, a distance of 
nine miles and return, I was deeply impressed with the good- 
ness of God for giving us such a bountiful harvest as is prom- 
ised by the fields, that are groaning under the weight 
of the golden grain ; but a thinking man cannot drive along 
these roads and see these beautiful fields and farms without 
remembering that before this day there was some digging 
there, some hard labor by our fathers — some brush piles 
cleared away. 

I have before me this evening a theme that requires the 
clearing away of some rubbish, debris — brush piles, if you 
please. In order to build a house we must lay a good foun- 
dation ; but before laying the foundation we must clear away 
the brush-piles. 

1. In order that you may understand me better, I will 
ask you, in the first place to-night, are you here with the dis- 
position of in irid that God wants you to have? That is brush- 
pile number one. Did you, when you came into this house 
this evening, remember that this is the house of prayer? 
"My house is a house of prayer," said Jesus ; and unless we 
enter this house with the spirit of prayer, you will not, you 
may rest assured, understand what I am talking about to- 
night, nor take the blessing home that God wishes to give 
vou. 835 



836 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

Concerning this same matter I will ask you, Have you 
banished from your minds the spirit of prejudiced criticism? 

I recognize the fact that I am going to speak upon a deli- 
cate subject to-night, and I fear that some of you may have 
come with the disposition of mind that a certain lady had 
who came here to a funeral not long ago. She has been 
talking all over town of the Rev. Mr. Long's having turned 
his head away from a certain class of people. The fact is, 
I do turn my head every day, but I do not know to-day yet 
what she means. She came here to find fault, and found it, 
then went and tattled it all over the city, and if any one of 
you have come here with the object of finding a little fault, 
I assure you, you will get a chance to find it before long. 

Understand me, just criticism is a fine thing. It is criti- 
cism which has brought the best out of the churches, and the 
best out of every organization; but a man who comes with 
his mind made up that he is going to look for something 
to find fault with, had better stayed at home ; he will never 
learn anything ; he never grows intellectually, nor any other 
way. 

I mention this because some man came to me the other 
day and said, "There is a plot on hand;" I said, "What is 
it?" "Why," he said, "If you say anything to-night that 
doesn't suit a certain set of people, they have made up their 
minds that in a body they will get up and walk out." I do 
not believe it. I believe I have an intelligent set of people 
before me to-night, people who are willing to listen to a man 
who has convictions; a man who is going to say honestly 
what he believes, if the heavens fall, and all I have to say is 
this, that if we have got anybody in this house to-night so 
narrow-minded as to think that if anything is said that does 
not suit him, he is going to walk out, I will give him a 
minute's time to walk out now; there are some standing out- 
side who would like to come in. 

Do you realize I am still at the first brush-pile? Do you 
realize that you are enjoying an unusual privilege this even- 
ing — to hear the other side of a question that has been 
before the people since the year 1717? I dare say there 
would be no trouble for all the secret orders in this city to 
go to most of the ministers of this city, and hear the good 



A SERMON ON SECRET SOCIETIES. 831 

side of secret orders, and I am not so narrow-minded a^ 
not to see some good tilings in secret orders, but I wish you 
to understand,* my friends, that it is more beneficial to you, 
if you some time or other in life hear the other side. Now, 
you know as well as I do, that "Many men have many minds; 
many birds of many kinds," and it is well to know why 
some other men do not think as we do. Because you have 
thoughts that are not mine, and because I think otherwise 
than you do, does not make me less manly than you. 

So I would ask you all to-night to remember that this is 
the house of prayer. I would have you all to remember 
to-night that you should not have minds that are prejudiced 
against the truth — that you rather should enjoy the privi- 
lege of hearing what you cannot hear in any other church in 
Mansfield. I am ready to say to-night that there is not one 
minister of the gospel out of ten thousand, who is ready 
to stand up in a place like I am standing to-night and handle 
as delicate a question as I am going to handle, and I am going 
to handle it as in the presence of my God. 

2. There is another brush-pile I w T ould like to clear out 
of the road, and that is this : I suppose some of you are 
wondering, "Well, Mr. Long, where do you stand, have you 
been a member of a lodge, are you a member of a lodge, will 
you ever be?" I will settle that in one sentence. / never 
have been a member of any secret society and I never will be. 
Xow you know that. There is no guessing about it. I never 
have been a member of any secret society and I never will. 
/ will (jive yon three reasons for that. 

You would not think it satisfactory for me to say to you 
that I was a Eepublican because my father was, or that I 
was a Democrat because father was, and yet, if father had 
good reasons for being a Eepublican or a Democrat, I have 
some respect for his reasons for being such. I was, fortu- 
nately, one of those boys who had one of the best Christian 
fathers and one of the best Christian mothers that any boy 
could have, and that father and mother of mine, while they 
never went to school but seven days, had convictions. One 
was that everything that is good and right can be done in the 
open, and that secret societies are not good things; they 
impressed that upon their boy from his infancy, and I do 



S38 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

not believe that mother ever saw a more sorrowful day in 
her life than when she learned that her oldest boy joined 
the Odd Fellows. 

A great many people seem to think that we should say 
nothing about these questions because "my wife belongs to 
a secret society," or "my husband belongs to a secret society/' 
or "niy father belongs to a secret society," or some of their 
friends. I cannot help it, my friends, if everybody belongs 
to secret societies; that may all be, but I repeat, that father 
and mother thought they were right and I am going to honor 
them until I die, and I believe they were right. I am going 
a step further. Not only Avere father and mother very much 
opposed to all secret societies, but my church was also. I was 
under the instruction of one of the best catechists that any 
boy has ever found. Peace to the ashes of old Eeverend 
Father Dornbirer, who now sleeps up at Sandusky, Ohio. 
In all my life, (and I have been in two colleges, one acad- 
emy and two seminaries) I have never found a man who 
could so successfully get the kernel from God's truth as that 
man and having been under his instruction two long years, 
I had truth impressed upon my mind that will not be ban- 
ished this side of the grave. The Eev. Dornbirer taught me, 
from the first commandment and the subject of prayer in 
the name of Jesus, that secret society religion is wrong; and 
that is one reason I am opposed to secret societies. My 
church is opposed to it. TVhen I say "my church," I mean 
the Lutheran Church, I do not mean the General Synod. 
When I say the Lutheran Church, I want you to remember 
that the Lutheran Church is larger, much larger than any 
Synod. The Lutheran Church to-day has over seventy mill- 
ion of members. In our own country we have five or six 
large bodies ; we have the General Synod ; we have the Gen- 
eral .Council; we have the Synodical Conference, with its 
seminary in St. Louis, and we have the Joint Synod of Ohio. 

The Joint Synod says no preacher nor member of that 
large church shall belong to secret societies. 

The General Council allows the members to belong, but 
the preachers dare not. 

The General Synod has never taken a position against 
secret societies; many of its members belong to secret soci- 



A SERMON OX SECRET SOCIETIES. 839 

eties and many of its preachers do, and I am not here to 
pass judgment upon them to-night. I am here to give my 
impressions upon the subject. 

Not only am I opposed to secret societies because my 
church and my parents were, but I am opposed because I 
have found out that the great men who dare to -stand alone 
were opposed to secret societies. We are sometimes led to 
believe that a man cannot be a great man unless he is a 
Mason or unless lie belongs to this or that lodge. The fact is 
that the greatest brain this country ever had, weighed sixty- 
seven ounces, and that was the brain of Daniel Webster, and 
Daniel Webster was opposed to secret societies until he died. 
Did you know that? 

Did you know that the lodges have been condemned by 
statesmen like John Marshall, chief justice of the United 
States ; William Wirt, attorney general of the United States ; 
William H. Seward, secretary of state; Charles Sumner, 
senator from Massachusetts; Thaddeus Stevens, the great 
commoner from Pennsylvania ; Joseph Cook, Dwight L. 
Moody, and nearly all the great evangelists? 

Do you think that I have got such bad company when 
I take the position that I am not a friend to secret orders? 

One thing I want to clear up, I am not opposing men, it 
is a system I am talking about to-night. I love a Mason 
as I love anybody ; I love an Odd Fellow as I love anybody. 
It is not men, it is a system I am opposing. 

That is the second brush-pile. I hope it is out of the way. 

3. Then we come to the third: Should secret societies 
be publicly discussed from the pulpit? You would think, 
from what little you hear on the subject that it should not. 
I am here to-night to say that it should. If you will turn 
to 1 Thess. 5th chapter and 21st verse, you will find that it 
should be discussed, because it says : "Prove all things ; hold 
fast that which is good." "All things'' include the secret 
societies of this country, do they not? God wants them 
proved, and how are you going to prove them, if you do not 
discuss them? 

Not only the public demands it, the Church demands it. 
One of the obligations of nearly every secret order is that it 
leaves vour religion to vou and to your Church. I wish 



840 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

that would be kept. If it would be, there would be no need 
of this discussion. That is the obligation that secret so- 
cieties should take, and the trouble is they do not keep it. 
"We leave your religion to you and to your church," and 
then the very next minute they come along and say, when 
some one dies, "We are going to have a funeral and we would 
like to bury him." Isn't that religion? I want to ask you 
to-night if that isn't religion. We have buried members of 
this church, and I have gone out to the cemetery and I have 
buried them with one of the best burial services there ever 
was, in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost. 

A question to every secretist in this house: If you are 
going to leave his religion to him and his Church, and we 
bury him in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, 
what are you going to walk around that grave for and give 
him another burial service? That is a fair question. Why 
don't you leave it to him and to his Church? I am not the 
only man who sees the inconsistency there. You cannot 
improve upon a burial in the name of the Triune God. 

I have just read a book this week called "Modern Secret 
Societies,' ' by one of the best of men, a minister of Jesus 
Christ, and that man is Charles A. Blanchard, D. D., presi- 
dent of Wheaton college, and I was surprised to hear him 
say, a little stronger than S. P. Long would say, just what 
I think about this lodge question. Hear him : 

"The burial service is made up of portions of Scripture, 
various philosophical reflections and hymns, which, when 
read and sung in solemn tone, cause one who does not under- 
stand Christianity to think it just like the services of a 
Christian church. 

"But more serious than this pretense is the religious 
teaching of the ceremony. The form is the same for all per- 
sons, and whether the deceased died of delirium tremens 
or as a Christian should, makes no difference. There is no 
exaltation of the law of God, no lifting up of Jesus Christ, 
no warning to men who are ignoring God or living in open 
sin. On the contrary, there is an explicit or implicit affirma- 
tion that the one who has passed on has gone to heaven, or 
the grand lodge above, as they usually call it, and this not 
because he repented and believed in Jesus, but because he 



A SERMON ON SECRET SOCIETIES. 841 

belongs to this lodge. Profane, unclean, avaricious, un- 
truthful, unrepentanl sinners are being buried with these 

riles from one end of this hind to the other. 

"Another most important fact in this connection is that 
the lodges always get some minister of the Gospel to take 
part in this awful transaction, if possible. 

"Of course, the minister who, to secure favor, does such 
works as these above described, cuts the ground from under 
his own feet and that of his church. But his great crime is 
that he thus denies the Gospel he is sworn to preach and 
gives hope, not to those avIio repent and believe in Jesus 
Christ, but to those avIio do neither. He may make a little 
money or a few friends, but he destroys the souls of men 
and proclaims that the law he preaches on the subject is a 
lie, a scarecrow set up in the field of human life, powerless to 
help or harm. 

"The most fearful fact concerning these lodge burials is 
that men who profess to be Christians take part in them with 
wicked men, both alike expressing the hope that they will 
meet other wicked men who are dead, in heaven. The 
Bible clearly teaches that some men are saved and others 
lost. It in this way seeks to bring men to faith in Jesus, 
repentance for sin and holy living. 

"The lodges rival the Church. The lodge men, as a rule, 
do not belong to it or care for it. At the same time the 
lodges like to get ministers and church members into their 
number and to have all, good and bad, Christian and un- 
believer, stand about the grave of a wicked man, singing, 
praying and talking about meeting him in heaven or the 
grand lodge or camp, or encampment, or - something else, 
above. 

"The only defense which Christian lodge men make 
against this charge is that ministers at times do the same. 
This is true. Ministers are not all converted men, and many 
who draw salaries from Christian congregations are Uni- 
tarians, Universalists, or infidels. But the fact that some 
peachers tell lies on funeral occasions is not a justification 
of an order which is built upon the lie they tell. 

"God says : These shall go away into everlasting punish- 
ment, but the righteous into life eternal.' According to the 



842 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

Bible there are two sorts of people, good and bad, on the 
way to two places, heaven and hell. If this is true, then 
lodge burials are a lying insult to God, and a peril to men. 
They help to ruin the souls that die by promising peace and 
safety even while destruction is rushing upon them. God 
grant that no professed Christian who reads these words 
may, by sharing in such services, bring the blood of lost men 
upon his soul." 

We say that the Church demands a discussion of this 
question, and not only for that reason, but for another. Her 
own charity is questioned. How often you hear people say : 
"If the Church gave as much as the lodges, we would not 
need the lodges." I ask the question to-night, What is 
charity? 

You take up the constitution of Odd Fellowship and it 
says that a man who joins this lodge must believe in a Su- 
preme Being, be a white man and must be a man of good 
health and able to earn his own living. 

I ask, for instance, of you Foresters, and I honor you 
as men, what kind of a man will you take into your lodge? 
A man in good health, because life insurance is connected 
with it, of course. That is all right, from a business stand- 
point; it makes it possible to do these things, but don't go 
around and parade your charity. Suppose I had a building 
on a street in this city, I put a sign up over it, and say "This 
is a house of Charity ;" a black man comes along and I say, 
"You cannot come in ; you are black." Another poor cripple 
comes along on his crutches and says, "Help!" I say, "No, 
only good, sound men, who can earn their living, are ad- 
mitted here." 

Don't you see, my friends, it is not charity, but simply 
pure business? 

"Yes," but you say, "How if we go to the poor widow's 
home and hand her a'check for $2,000, and she signs a receipt 
and a card of thanks for the papers, isn't that charity?" No, 
I say, a thousand times, no. That woman's living husband 
bought that insurance, and paid for it. I carry insurance, 
and when I die I do not want any man to come to my 
widow and say, "We are giving you a check of charity/' It 



A SERMON OX SECRET SOCIETIES. 843 

is not charity. I have bought that insurance and paid for it 
and she has a right to it. 

"Yes, but Ave visit the sick, and sit around and take care 
of them." 

Very well, is that charity? That man paid for you to 
come and take care of him when sick, while well. Why did 
he pay his dues? He paid them in order that you might 
come and wait on him when sick, and take care of him 
when sick, and that is business and nothing but business. 
The very moment he ceases to pay his dues, the loving 
charitable brother fails to go to see him any more. Isn't 
that a fact? Isn't that the rule? Is that charity? We are 
simply discussing the question to-night. Why do you boast 
of your charity? It is simply business. 

The Church of God is the only charitable institution. 
Whenever you hear of any organization under heaven going 
out and practicing charity, it is because it learned it from 
the Christian Church and nowhere else. 

Not only the Church demands an investigation — the 
fa mill/ demands it; the family itself. A man is promised, 
when he goes into a secret society that nothing shall inter- 
fere Avith his politics, or Church, or family, and then the 
man is initiated, pays his dues and goes home. His wife 
says, "Where have you been so long to-night?" "Down 
street." Xine times out of ten he does not tell her he has 
been initiated that night. But something takes place he 
promised he would never reveal, neither by spoken word 
or any writing or representation, or any other way, to any- 
one outside of his own membership; then he goes home to 
his wife, the bosom of his family, and God says they are one, 
and he has promised to tell Tom, Dick and Harry what he 
dare not tell his wife. You all know it, and if it isn't time 
that the family rebels against that, I do not know what is 
right. What right has any man on earth, what right would 
I have to know something of that kind that my own dear wife 
could not know? She has a right to rebel. 

What is becoming of our homes? That is the question. 
I can illustrate what I mean. A short time since, while in 
Columbus, I walked across the street one night to call upon 



844 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

a widow, and as I walked in there, I found her little chil- 
dren sitting at a table, asleep, the dishes not washed, the 
table not rid off, and as I looked around, being very well 
acquainted, one of the dear little girls woke up and began to 
cry. I said, "Don't cry, it is Mr. Long;" she began to talk 
and I asked, "Where is mamma?" "Mamma is to lodge." 

There was a time when the fathers and mothers realized 
that the home was the foundation of good government and 
everything, and they stayed at home with their children. 
But now, Oh, it is a terrible thing to see the saloons run- 
ning down here behind the screened windows; that is an 
awful sight, and, oh, that Christians would cry out against 
that devilish institution behind the painted windows and 
screens, where our boys and our fathers go! But to-day, 
fathers, mothers and sons, go up stairs, just one story higher, 
and that makes it all right; they pull down the blinds and 
put up the screens, and when they go home, every business 
is closed up except three. 

There are only three kinds of business open after the 
lodges close; Saloons, gambling dens and the unmention- 
able place, and while it is a fact that many good people go 
past these, I would not want my boy to come home from the 
lodge, at a dark hour- of the night, past those three places. 
I say this as a Christian and that is where I stand. 

The family demands an investigation of this question and 
not only the family, the state demands it. 

I had some of the sweetest little children in my Sunday- 
school in Columbus that I ever saw; quite a number of the 
same family. The father had been killed by some accident ; 
the mother was called to the telephone to come down town 
immediately, and right at the North Market she went up- 
stairs, she Avas seen going up, and it was not long until 
her screams were heard, and she was found with her throat 
cut from ear to ear. Sands had cut it. I shall never forget 
the scene. Sands was a Mason. He didn't do that because 
he was a Mason. All I want to show is that the state wants 
to make an investigation. Sands was taken to prison; he 
was tried. I said to the little orphans, "See to it that no 
Mason goes on the jury." You know the old saying that a 
Mason never hangs, unless he hangs himself. I said, "See 



A SERMON OX SECRET SOCIETIES. 845 

to it that no Mason goes on the jury," and they saw to it. 
The trial came off. Sands, the Mason, saw, and everybody 
knew that the laws of Ohio condemned him to the electric 
chair; every sane man in Columbus said he ought to go to 
the electric chair. But there was a prosecuting- attorney in 
Columbus who was a Mason, and when he saw there was 
nothing left, he went to these dear little orphan children 
and got them to say, "Let Sands admit and plead guilty of 
murder m the second degree and put him in the penitentiary 
for life. 1 ' In that way the Mason saved the Mason from 
death, and that is being done all over this country. No won- 
der an Iowa judge said a few weeks ago, "It is almost impos- 
sible any more to get justice." It is time that the state is 
investigating this question. It demands a discussion. 

Look at our labor troubles. I just cut this out of one of 
our papers: "Gigantic is the building tie-up in New York; 
now presumed that two hundred thousand men are idle." So 
say the papers. 

It is said that over here the foundation is laid for a new 
school house, and the men will not lay the brick on top of it 
because the foundation was laid by non-union men. If that 
is not an instance of slavery, then, my friends, I do not 
understand it. You are finding out that what I said last 
Sunday night from the thirteenth chapter of Revelations is 
coming true. The time is coming when the poor man can- 
not build his own home. 

It is time Ave are discussing these questions. 

I claim, in the next place, that secret societies themselves 
should demand an investigation. Secret societies are not all 
alike. Some are better than others are, and those that have 
anything Avrong about them, if they have got men in them 
who want to know those wrongs, they Avant to get rid of these 
wrongs and want to improve. Nothing has hurt the Church 
more than the days of the Dark Ages, Avhen they did not 
dare discuss the Church, and nothing will hurt the lodges 
more than if you do not discuss them, then they are bound to 
go doAvn. That is brush-pile number three. 

4. Brush pile number four: Can secret societies be dis- 
cussed by one who is not a member and who has never been a 
member? 






846 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

Thej come to me and say, "Are you a member of any 
lodge?" "No." "Then, how can you discuss secret soci- 
eties?" I will tell you how. 

In the first place, they can be discussed because your 
public services are not secret; your literature is not secret; 
your own secrets are not secret and God's Word is not secret. 
How can you expect me to be so blind when I see you walk- 
ing on the streets and in your services, how can .you expect 
me to be so blind as to know nothing about secret societies? 

Then how about your literature, is that secret? Does a 
man have to pay out from tAvo to five, to twenty-five dollars 
just to join the lodge to find out what it teaches? No. Go 
to 221 Madison street, Chicago, and buy them ; buy the 
secrets of any secret society in this country; buy them for 
fifteen to seventy-five cents. You can also buy their own 
manuals. 

Here is the Odd Fellows' Manual. Can I not discuss 
this? These are not secrets at all. If there is a Mason in 
the house to-night he knows that Mackey's manual of the 
lodges, by Albert G. Mackey, past general grand high priest 
of the general grand chapter of the United States, teaches 
what Masonry is, just as well as the Lutheran catechism 
teaches what the Lutheran Church is. 

Even your secrets are not secret. 

President Finney, of Oberlin college, was a Mason and 
was conscience stricken, and came out and wrote an exposi- 
tion, and here it is. Those are not secrets. 

Here is another man, Edmond Romayne. He was past 
master in the Keystone lodge, No. 639, Chicago, 111. He 
gave us this book. It can be bought for a dollar. These are 
no secrets. 

But I icant to say I never made any use of these expo- 
sitions. I do'nt need them. 

One thing more. The Bible is God's Book, and there is 
not a thing in all history that is not discussed in this Book; 
even the secret societies themselves are discussed in this 
Book, and God knows them ; there are no secrets before Him. 

So you see it can be discussed by one who is no member. 

I say the very secrets that I cannot know are not worth 
discussing. What are they? Pass words, initiations, etc. 



A SERMON ON SECRET SOCIETIES. 847 

What do I care for your pass words? Two or three men 
can get together and make pass words as good as any Lodge. 

What do I care for the initiations? If they are secret I 
don't care anything about them. Watch some men blush. 
I will not tell which lodge it is, but here is a man who on 
Sunday stands before his people with a great big robe on, 
and looks as holy, almost, as an angel. Then he joins a 
secret lodge. The first thing they do, they say, "Take the 
robe off ;" that done "Take your coat off ;" that is done ; "Take 
your jacket off;" he does that; then they said, "Take your 
shirt ony' and he took it off; they said, "Take off another gar- 
ment," and he took that off; "Then roll the last garment up 
above your knees and take one shoe off," and they put a 
rope around his neck, and they led him in and around like 
a calf with a halter, and they led him up to an altar, and 
he found a Bible there, and two little instruments. And 
some of you know that you went through the same thing. 
You know it. 

But I do not care anything about that; that does not 
amount to anything, and perhaps I should enjoy leading that 
man around like a calf myself. 

Can secret societies be discussed by one who has been no 
member? I come to the question. Yes, and only by him. 
Why? Because a man who plunges into any evil to see the 
evil, does not see it as does the man who does not enter. Sup- 
pose I were to announce that on next Sunday evening I was 
going to give an exposition of intemperance, does the fact 
that I am not a drunkard make me incompetent to discuss it? 
Suppose I went down and got drunk so as to discuss intem- 
perance, what would you think of me? 

What would you think of any man who would think he 
has to go and commit adultery before he can discuss it? 

Xo man can discuss anything as well if he is in it, as if 
he stands out and looks at it; and so I say again, that no 
man belonging to a secret society can discuss the question 
as well as one who is outside. 

One thing more, how can any man join all the secret 
societies? I do not know whether it is true or not, but I 
have heard there are almost one hundred secret societies 
here; I do not know whether that is true or not, there may 







848 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

be only fifty, or thirty, but how in the name of common sense 
a man can join all of these, I do not know. If that man 
only could discuss them, how could one who belonged to only 
a few? No man on earth can join all. So, you sec 1 , the ques- 
tion comes up again, Can secret societies be discussed by 
one, who has been no member? I say Yes, and he is the only 
man. Why? 

Here is the oath taken in a certain lodge in Mansfield. 
I do not want to make family trouble, so I will not tell which 
lodge it is. 

"I, , of my own free will and accord, in the presence 

of Almighty God, and this worshipful lodge erected to him, 
and dedicated to the Holy St. John, do hereby and hereunder 
(here the master places right hand on that of candidate) 
most solemnly and sincerely promise and swear that I will 
always hail, ever conceal and never reveal, any of the secret 

arts, parts of points of the hidden mysteries of which 

have been heretofore, may at this time, or shall at any future 
period be communicated to me as such, to any person or per- 
sons whomsoever, except it be to a true and lawful brother 

or within a lawfully constituted lodge of , and 

neither unto him nor them, until by strict trial, due exami- 
nation, I shall have found him or them as lawfully entitled 
to the same as I am myself. 

"I furthermore solemnly promise and swear that I will 
not write, print, paint, stamp, stain, cut, carve, make or en- 
grave them, or cause the same to be done upon anything mov- 
able or immovable, capable of receiving the least impression 
of a word, syllable, letter or character, whereby the same 
may become legible or intelligible, to myself or to any person 

under the whole canopy of heaven, and the secrets of 

be thereby unlawfully obtained through my unworthiness. 

a To all of this I most solemnly and sincerely prom- 
ise and swear, with a firm and steadfast resolution, to 
keep and perform the same without any equivocation, 
mental reservation or secret evasion of mind ! whatever, 
binding myself under no less a penalty than that of 
having my throat exit aeross, my tongue torn out by 
its roots and buried in the rough sands of the sea at low 
water mark, where the tide ebbs and flows twiee in twenty- 



A SEKMON ON SECRET SOCIETIES. Sl ( .> 

four hours, should I ever knowingly or willingly violate this } 

my solemn oath or obligation as an . aS'o help me (iod, 

and keep me steadfast in the due performance of the same" 

How under heaven, can that man discuss secret societies? 
How can he do it? Suppose 1 should go to a .Mason to-mor- 
row, and 1 should say, "Look here, Mr. Mason, is this a true 
exposition of your lodge?" Do you know that he could not 
say "No" nor "Yes?" I am bound to make that man lie or 
keep quiet. Why? If he says "Yes," he has lied, because 
he broke his obligation; should he say "No, it isn't," he 
has lied again. The consequence is, wives, when you go 
home, don't ask your husbands whether that was their lodge 
or not, because if you do, they will only cough around and 
say "Long is crazy.'' They can neither say Yes, nor No. Oh, 
my friends, that old rope is around their necks yet and they 
do not know it. 

5. Another brush pile: Is not the faet that so many 
preachers belong to secret societies an indication that there 
can be no wrong in them? 

Whenever the devil wants to make a thing look respec- 
table, he hunts a preacher up. 

I have some questions to ask. Do you find anywhere in 
the Bible that it says if a preacher does a thing, it is right, 
no difference what it is? Where do you find that? 

Let us go over to Mt. Sinai. Moses goes up into 'the 
mountain to get the tables of stone; he leaves Rev. Aaron 
down with the people. The people got tired worshiping 
the true and living God and said to Rev. Aaron, "We would 
like for you to make for us the kind of a God we had over in 
Egypt; here is the gold." Rev. Aaron took the gold and 
said, "Roll up your sleeves and go down and roll up that 
mud; heat the gold and pour it in that," and when it was 
done they took out a golden calf. When Moses came down 
from the mountain he found Aaron ; "What does this mean, 
why are you not worshiping the true and living God?" And 
Aaron said, "The people just came to me and brought their 
gold, and I just melted it and poured it down this little hole, 
and it came out a calf." 

Yes, it came out a calf! He didn't say, "I made it a calf," 
but "it came out a calf." And so I have talked to preachers. 

*54 



850 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

I have said, "How in the name of common sense can you do 
these things? 7 ' and about the only answer, when it is all 
summed up, is that it came out a calf. 

Go on over to Mt. Carmel. There was Elijah. "And 
he said. Now therefore send and gather to me all Israel to 
Mt. Carmel, and the prophets of Baal, four hundred and 
fifty, and the prophets of the grove, four hundred." Eight 
hundred and fifty preachers were there, and by fire and 
sword, God proved that only one was faithful. 

I am right here to-night to say that I do not care if 
every preacher in the world belongs to some kind of an or- 
der, it is wrong as sure as there is a God in heaven. That 
does not settle anything for me. 

Look at Mt. Calvary ! Was there ever a greater tragedy 
in the world than when they nailed Jesus on the cross? Yes,, 
the Romans did it, but the Jewish preachers made the Ro- 
mans do it, and you all know it. 

Do not prove anything to me by the preacher. God did 
not say, "Thus saith the preacner/' but "Thus saith the 
Lord/' and nothing else has any weight. 

I do not want any man to believe what I say if not based 
on good sense, good logic and upon the Word of God. 

6. Brush pile number six : Whom am I addressing this 
evening? First let me say, not a single secret society. We 
have with us to-night gentlemen, mostly members of Chris- 
tian churches, men whom I honor and love as I do any one 
in this house, but it is understood between me and them 
that they simply come in a body to-night to hear this ser- 
mon. I do not icant anybody to say that this sermon was 
addressed only to the Foresters. It is to the Foresters 
and to every one else who comes to this house for their eter- 
nal good. Do not think I am addressing a single secret 
society. 

I am told that there are some secret orders to-day that 
have no oath; I am told that there are some that take no 
pledge and I do not mean them. 

Again, I am not talking to-night to the true Christians 
who are not members of any secret orders. I am not sure 
Avhether any are here or not. T have been told time and 
attain that Mansfield is the Greatest city in the state of Ohio 



A SERMON ON SECRET SOCIETIES. 851 

for secret orders. I have been asked to believe that there 
are no good, leading men in the city, and women either, if 
you please, who are not members of this or that order. These 
people may be mistaken, 1 do not know. 1 am sure of one 
thing; I know that Elijah on Mt. Carmel divided his people 
into three crowds, the preachers on one side, and the chil- 
dren of Israel on the other and he stood alone, as a man of 
God. One thing I would like to know for my good, and for 
the good of Mansfield. I would like to know if there are any 
men or women iu this house to-night, members of Christian 
churches, active members of Christian churches, who do not 
belong to any secret societies whatever. If there are it would 
do me good to see some of them. Will you stand up? 

That will do, at least one hundred of you. I feel like 
saying, with Elijah, when he went to God and said, "I only 
am left to worship the true and living God." God said, "There 
are seven thousand in Israel who never bowed their knees 
before Baal/' and I am glad to know that even in Mans- 
field, one hundred people are found in one congregation 
only, who still say they do not belong to any lodges. 

One other thing. I am not addressing to-night those 
members of the different orders avIio do not belong to the 
Christian Church. There are a great many men belonging 
to secret orders, and women, too, who make no profession 
of worshiping the Lord Jesus Christ. There are Jews, and 
faithful Jews, who do not pretend to worship Jesus Christ. 
There are people who are not Jews, who are members of 
Christian churches and not members of lodges. I am not 
addressing that class of people. And yet how many people 
there are who make no profession at all of Christianity, and 
still are members of lodges, will they stand up? I see none 
of those. 

I am going to tell you who I am addressing to-night. 
Those who hold membership in secret orders and the Chris- 
tian Church — people who belong both to the Christian 
Church and to such secret societies as require an oath. I 
would like to know how T many people in this congregation 
belong to both, to the Christian Church and to some secret 
organization. Will you do me the kindness to rise to your 
feet? 



852 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

I think a fair estimate would be two hundred. (About 
1,600 did not rise at all.) 

Now I come to the conclusion. Pardon me for speaking 
a little at length to-night, but I know you would not want 
me to wait until next Sunday to say what I have to say. 

Let me read the text : 

"And Elijah came unto all the people and said, How 
long halt ye between two opinions? If the Lord be God, 
follow him; but if Baal, then follow him. And the people 
ansivered him not a icord." 

What the Lord God wanted to say, through the mouth of 
Elijah on Mt. Carmel Avas that undecided people should 
come to a decision; that they should decide, in the first 
place, who the true and living God is; and, in the second 
place, decide to-day to follow God because He is God. And 
that is my plea to-night to you two hundred, who want to 
be true Christians and true lodge members. I beg of you 
to-night, first of all, to decide who is the true God in the 
Church; it will only take a minute to do that, because ypu 
go out of here to-night singing, "Praise Father, Son and 
Holy Ghost." That is your God in the Church. When you 
confessed the creed, you said, "I believe in God, the Father, 
God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost." That is your God 
in the Church. There is no question about that so we will 
waste no more time. 

Then decide, in the second place who is your God in the 
lodge. I am going to call up four witnesses. 

1. First of all, we will call you two hundred up. Who 
is your God the moment you step into the lodge? You say, of 
course, "It is the same God, Father, Son and Holy Ghost; 
We do not worship two Gods." That is your testimony. We 
want to take it down, for in every court of justice, things 
must be established by two or more witnesses. 

2. I am going to call now upon another witness. Man- 
ual of secret orders, who is the true and living God? I pick 
up the manual of Odd Fellowship; I pick up the constitu- 
tion of Odd Fellowship, and ask, who is the true and living 
God, and the only answer to that question given from be- 
ginning to end, is that there is a Supreme Being, a preserver 
and creator of the universe: it never says whether it is 



A SERMON ON SECRET SOCIETIES. 853 

Father, Son and Holy Ghost, or not, but at the best it 
simply says, "Father." 

I open this book and turn to the page where it does say 
that the name of God must be so used that it gives no offense 
to any one on account of his sectarian ideas, meaning thereby 
not to offend the Jew, who does not believe in Christ. 

I take up another manual, and I say, Who is the true 
and living God? I am not guessing about this. Every man 
in the house to-night who belongs to a secret order knows 
that in the Great Masonic Temple in Philadelphia, — I have 
stood in it myself — there is a pavement called Mosaic ; 
that up in the center of this pavement is this star, (point- 
ing to one in the manual) and they know that that star- 
originally meant the star of Bethlehem, and commemorative 
of the star which guided the wise men of the East to the 
place of the Savior's nativity. This became considered as 
too sectarian in its character and unsuitable to the uni- 
versal religion of Masonry, and has been omitted since the 
meeting of the Grand Lodge at Baltimore in 1842. 

In other words, the Masons say that the star dare not 
represent Christ, and Christ dare not be recognized in our 
lodges until you get to a certain degree, and then the Jew 
can go no further, and can never become a Knight Templar. 

So that the manual of your lodge does tell us that the 
name of Christ is never used, except in the highest degrees. 
I have read these manuals through and I cannot find the 
name of Christ in any of them. 

The other day, on my way to a funeral, in a cab, I had 
a good lodge man sitting by my side. He said, "Long, what 
is your idea in opposing these things?" I said, "I will tell 
you why. Because in your prayer you never use the name 
Christ." "Why," he says, "Yes we do; I have read them 
for fifteen years." I said, "Get your ritual out of your 
pocket;" he did, and we read the service. We found Lord, 
and God, mentioned, but not the name of Christ. 

This manual from beginning to end says that the God 
of the lodge is simply a Supreme Being, not telling whether 
it is God the Father, Son and Holy Ghost or not. 

3. I call witness number three. The ruling member- 
ship. "I guess the members all know who their God is." 



854 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

"Why," they say, "We are all Christians." Yes, you may be 
here in Mansfield, but don't you know that Masonry is just 
as great in China as it is in the United States? and don't 
you know that in some cities there are members of lodges 
who despise the name of Christ? 

I tell you if you want to judge an organization, you dare 
not judge it by a single lodge, or a single little section, but 
you have got to take the total membership, and I make this 
statement : "You can take the total membership of any lodge 
in all the ivorld and put it to a vote, who is your God, and I 
am here to say that the majority will say, it is not Jesus 
Christ/' 

The Jews are good lodge members. They do not worship 
nor believe in our Christ. There are many members in 
Mansfield, I dare say, who do not belong to any church, and 
do not worship Jesus Christ ; they do take part in the wor- 
ship of the lodges. Who is the God of the lodge? 

4. Says some one : "In our higher degrees of Masonry 
we do worship Christ." I have heard that quite often, and 
I am here to say that is not true. I will call a Witness that 
will settle that. They say, "Oh, we have got Christ; we 
drink out of that little skull, and we have got things you do 
not know anything about. I am going to call Jesus Christ 
as a witness, and the question I am going to put to Him is 
this: Art Thou worshiped in the lodges? Answer: Isaiah 
55. "They shall come to me without money and without 
price:" If the Mason ever got up to that degree where he 
can worship Christ without paying for it, I want to know it. 
Matt. 5:16. "Let you light shine before men, that they 
may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is 
in heaven." Does that sound as if Jesus Christ were up in 
the highest degree of Masonry? 

Matt. 24:23-26. Christ, art Thou worshiped in the 
lodges? Answer: "Then if any man shall say unto you, Lo, 
here is Christ, or there ; believe it not. For there shall arise 
false Christs, and false prophets, and shall shoio great signs 
and wonders; insomuch that, if it were possible,- they shall 
deceive the very elect. Behold, I have told you before. 
Wherefore, if they shall say unto you, Behold, he is in the 



A SERMON OX SECRET SOCIETIES. 855 

desert; go not forth; behold, he is in the secret chambers, 
believe it not" 

Thai settles it for any Christian in the Lodge. Who is 
your God then? 

"Well," some one says "May be yon do not interpret that 
rightly." Call np Christ once more. 

John 18:20. "In secret I have said nothing." What do 
you think of that? 

One man that I have almost put above all men in the 
world, and I think every Christian will, and that is the 
old apostle, Paul, and he says in the 6th chapter of 2 Corin- 
thians, 14th to 18th verses : 

14. Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbeliev- 
ers; for what fellowship hath righteousness with unright- 
eousness, and what communion hath light with darkness? 

15. And what concord hath Christ with Belial, or what 
part hath he that believeth with the infidel? 

16. And what agreement hath the temple of God with 
idols? for ye are the temple of the living God; as God hath 
said, I will dwell in them and walk in them, and I will be 
their God and they shall be my people. 

17. Wherefore, come out from among them, and he ye 
separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing, 
and I will receive you, 

18. And will be a Father unto you, and ye shall be my 
sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty. 

Now we have heard four witnesses. One says the god 
of the lodge is the Triune God, and three, including Jesus, 
say it is not true. The Father, Son and Holy Ghost is the 
God of the Church, and the God of the lodge is the Unknown 
God. 

Now, we have found out who God is in the lodge, and we 
have found out who God is in the Church. But one more 
question. Who is your God when you are neither in the 
Church nor in the lodge? Who is your God then? 

That is the kind of people Elijah had before him. They 
tried to worship both God and Baal. When they got away 
from Elijah and got away from Jezebel, they did not know 
what they were. So he said : "How long halt ye between two 



850 THE GREAT GOSPEL. 

opinions? If the Lord be God, follow Him; but if Baal, 
then follow him. And the people answered him not a word." 

How long halt ye between two opinions? When a man 
has two opinions, he hasn't any at all. Isn't that plain? If 
I don't know whether I want to go up this aisle or that aisle, 
it is simply that I do not know which way I am going. And 
that is the ease with so many men in the present day. I am 
asking the question, When you go outside of the Church and 
outside of the lodge, who is your God then? If the Lord 
be God, follow Him; if Baal, then follow him. There is a 
word in here I Avish you could understand in English as the 
Germans do: "Wie lange hinket ihr auf beiden Seiten?" 

In other words, it is correctly translated : How long are 
you going to limp and wriggle between two opinions? 

When a man walks along, lame in one foot, he is to be 
pitied, but when he becomes lame and limps in both feet, 
he becomes laughable. We had a mare at home, lame in 
her right hind foot, and we pitied her, but Avhen she became 
lame in both hind feet, when the neighbor boys came over 
Ave would lead old Sal out and run her up and doAvn the 
road, and laugh to see her limp at both feet. 

That is just what this says : Hoav long are you going to 
limp and wriggle between two opinions? 

Here is a brother minister in the Church. On Sunday 
he puts on his robe, looks holy, stands on his one foot and 
worships the Triune and LiAing God, Father, Son and Holy 
Ghost; on Monday eA^ening he is initiated into the lodge; 
he gets off of the triune leg, gets on the other leg, and 
worships a Supreme Being, the great Architect of the 
uniA^erse. Then on Thursday eA r ening he has an appointment 
at the church and one at the lodge, and he stands and 
wriggles. And there are hundreds and thousands of Chris- 
tians to-day in our cities and in our land, who do not knoAv 
exactly whether they ought to go to lodge or go to Christ's 
Church. They do not know exactly, Avhen speaking of God, 
whether they refer to the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, or to 
a Supreme Being, the Archtiect of the universe. Come out 
and decide to-day yet to folloAV the true and living God, be- 
cause He is God. "If the Lord be God, follow Him." 



A SERMON ON SECRET SOCIETIES. 857 

Too much time lias been wasted about these things. Life 
is almost past, and oh, how many people" there are who d<> 
not even know that the first commandment says, "1 am the 
Lord, thy God; thou shalt have no other gods before 1 me," 
— who do not seemingly, know that .Jesus said, "Thou shalt 
pray in my name/' and yet the name of Jesus you do not use 1 
half of the time. How much of life is already past and how 
short life is! 

Just a word to you who are sitting before me to-nigh t, 
and who would like to have a memorial sermon; I would like 
to have had time to say a word on that matter. I am glad 
you think of your own friends who are already sleeping in 
God's acre, and no man sympathizes more than I do in the 
love you have for those you have laid to rest, and if you 
can do any kind act to these widows and orphans, no one 
will say Amen, more than I will ; and at the same time, none 
can wish more than I do, that they had died in Christ, and 
that you might die in Christ, and that the evergreens you 
have dropped into the grave might be, in reality, emblems of 
the eternal life alone through Christ. 

Yes, life is short, and just because it is short, will you 
come to a decision in this matter? God heareth prayer. 
When that question was to be settled on Mt. Carmel, the 
worshipers of Baal prayed from morning until night; they 
prayed earnestly; they cut themselves with lances until 
the blood flowed, and yet theirs were no prayers at all; 
they could not be answered. Elijah knew their God had 
no ears to hear, and so he said, "Your god is sleeping; per- 
haps he is off hunting." He tried to open their eyes to see 
their mistake; and then Elijah got on his knees and called 
to the true and living God, the God of Abraham, the God of 
Isaac and the God of Jacob, to settle it to-day, with fire from 
heaven, who the true and living God is, and it was settled 
that day ; settled with prayer, and I wish every man, woman 
and child in this house to-night, no matter what your selfish 
or personal feeling may be — I urge you, for your own soul's 
good and for the welfare of humanity and for the glory of 
God, — would go home and get down on your knees before 
God, and say, "Now, my Lord and my God, do not let any- 



858 



THE GREAT GOSPEL. 



thing mislead me from the truth but give me the truth and 



help me to hold fast to it until I die. 77 
This question must be settled with 



prayer. Not only 
tell jow that the 
with fire. Elijah 



must it be settled with prayer, but I 

best way of all is to have it settled 

prayed for fire and the fire came, and the twelve barrels of 

water were licked up, and the twelve logs were burned up, 

and the bullock was burned up, and the men of Israel cried 

out, "The Lord He is God; the Lord He is God. 77 It was 

settled by fire. 

The question I am discussing cannot be settled by human 
wisdom, but it can be settled by the fire of the Holy Spirit, 
and when men are once filled with the Holy Spirit as they 
were on the day of Pentecost, from that cla}^ on they have 
got so much to do in the family, so much to do in the state, 
so much to do in the Church, that if the lodges were right, 
they have not got any time for them any more. Settle this 
question with fire from on high. 

God says one thing about this matter that I want you all 
to remember. I called your attention last Sunday night to 
the fact that in the latter part of the 11th chapter of Reve- 
lations, God tells us what secret societies will do for the 
United States: 

"And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, 
free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in 
their foreheads. 

"And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the 
mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name. 77 

My friends, if that is not coming pretty close to the 
high school foundation, I do not know. "That no man might 
buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the 
beast, or the number of his name. 77 

There was one thing I did not read to you about this 
mark; I have saved it for to-night. Revelations 14:9-11. 

"And the third angel folloAved them, saying with a loud 
voice, If any man worship the beast and his image, and re- 
ceive his mark in his forehead, or in his hand, 

"The same shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God, 
which is poured out without mixture in the cup of his indig- 
nation; and he shall be tormented with fire and brimstone 






A SERMON OX SECRET SOCIETIES. 859 

in the presence of the holy angels, and in the presence of the 
Lamb : 

"And the smoke of their torment ascendeth up forever 
and ever; and they have no rest day or night, who worship 
the beast and his image, and whosoever receiveth the mark 
of his name." 

As I stand here to-night, I thank God that there is a 
time coming, and not far hence, when questions concerning 
which we cannot agree on earth, are going to be settled for- 
ever, settled by fire. The tire of the Holy Spirit settles it 
now, and if these will not come to the Lord Jesiis Christ 
and he faithful to him, there will be another fire that will 
settle it. 

And now may the love of God the Father, the love of the 
Son, Jesns Christ, and the love of the Holy Spirit, bless these 
words of God, is my prayer. Amen. 






\n 5 . 






